Gaits of Heaven

isn’t really a dog, you see. He’s a fur person.”
    I came close to welcoming her to the Cambridge Fur Person Training Club. What stopped me was the realization of who these people were and the concomitant understanding that their presence here was my fault.
    As I heard the woman, she uttered two personal pronouns: “You me.” When she held out her hand, I understood that she was saying her name. “Eumie Brainard-Green. And my husband, Ted Green. And Dolfo, of course.”
    Still holding Dolfo’s makeshift leash, I shook Eumie Brainard-Green’s hand. “Holly Winter. And you won the Avon Hill auction.”
    Several months earlier, my cousin Leah, who had taught at the Avon Hill School’s summer program, had persuaded the board of the Cambridge Dog Training Club to donate training classes to the school’s benefit auction. Leah, a Harvard undergraduate, had insisted that she was too busy to act as the liaison between the club and the elite private school. Consequently, I’d volunteered and had dutifully sent the auction chairperson a write-up of exactly what the club was offering, together with instructions for the high bidder and a brochure about the club. The most important instruction to the winner had been to call me to register for a class. The information packet had explained the need for preregistration and had contained a list of rules, including the requirement that dogs arrive on leash. So, it may seem as if the fault lay with Ted and Eumie, but it didn’t. I knew better. Pop psychology would, of course, urge me to soften the statement by saying that Eumie, Ted, and Dolfo’s presence was my responsibility rather than my fault. In reality, it was both. When I’d convinced the club to donate dog training to the Avon Hill School, I’d made the mistake of listening to my cousin Leah and ignoring the possibility—worse, the likelihood—that we’d end up with rich Cambridge lunatics who’d feel entitled to show up at the club whenever they felt like it and to violate the club rules in exactly the same fashion they violated the Cambridge leash law and, for that matter, all other rules and regulations written and enacted for ordinary human beings and irrelevant to special people like them. And special dogs, too.
    As if reading my thoughts, Eumie said, “We were going to call, but Dolfo is a very special dog, you see, and we’re in a crisis. We need help now.”
    My pockets are dog training kits. After raiding my supply of Gooberlicious peanut butter—flavored treats, I’d lured Dolfo off me and was helping him to love the feel of concrete on his paws. He was licking my hands and bouncing around. He didn’t try to force the treats out of my hand, and he didn’t growl at me. Furthermore, although Steve, Rowdy, and Sammy were now approaching, Dolfo stayed focused on the food in my hand. If a dog is going to display aggression toward any other dogs, he’ll usually show it to Alaskan malamutes. The stimulus isn’t malamute behavior but what’s called “breed type”: as big dogs with ears up, plumy tails waving over their backs, and thick coats standing off their bodies, malamutes register as potential threats even when they are behaving like ladies and gentlemen. But as I’ve said, Dolfo didn’t react.
    “Beginners’ classes start on the first Thursday of the month,” I said, “and it’s too late to enter the one that’s already begun. You’ve missed too much, and it’s full, anyway. There won’t be another beginners’ class until September. I’m sorry. But you’re welcome to come in and—”
    As I’d been apologizing, my dog training buddy and my plumber, too, a guy named Ron Coughlin, had opened one of the armory doors. The club was lucky to have the use of the parking lot behind the armory. People who parked there entered through the back doors, as Ron had done; I’d noticed his van turning in. Ron was a nice guy and an excellent plumber. I’d known him for ages. We’d both served on the club’s board, we’d trained dogs together, he owned a perfect male golden retriever I’d helped him to adopt, and we’d hung out together at obedience trials. He’d recently done a lot of plumbing for Steve and me when we moved my friend and second-floor tenant, Rita, to the third floor and converted her second-floor apartment and my original ground-floor apartment into one big unit for ourselves. Still, when I ran into Ron, I didn’t fly up to him and give him a hug, and I didn’t