Gaits of Heaven

human fiend who, in my opinion, had been incapable of loving Steve or anyone else but had wanted a husband as good-looking as she was. And for that matter, still is. The bitch. Nontechnical term. Not that I myself objected to Steve’s appearance. He’s tall and lean, with wavy brown hair and eyes that change from blue to green. So, it’s my view that Anita the Fiend had made what Rita, my psychotherapist friend and tenant, calls a “narcissistic choice,” meaning that Anita had wanted a husband who enhanced her already spectacular looks. But perhaps I’m in no position to criticize the Fiend on that account. After all, I believe in the old maxim that it’s just as easy to love a beautiful dog as it is to love a homely dog, and if Anita felt the way about husbands that I do about dogs, so what! So what? The difference between us is that Anita is incapable of loving anyone except herself. In other words, she is a person of bad character, by which I mean that she hates dogs and, worse, instead of simply avoiding them, goes out of her vile way to be outright nasty to them. During her brief marriage to Steve, she’d known better than to target Steve’s shepherd—GSD, German shepherd dog—India, but had directed her venom at his timid, vulnerable pointer, Lady, whom I had actually seen her kick. So, India and Lady had immediately caught on to Anita, but Steve hadn’t been all that far behind them. To his credit, having married in haste, instead of repenting at leisure, he’d separated and divorced in haste, too. It was during his separation from Anita, and from me as well, that my Rowdy had been bred to American and Canadian Ch. Jazzland’s Embraceable You, the beauteous Emma, who had produced a splendid litter of puppies, one of which Steve had bought. And that’s how Sammy—-Jazzland’s As Time Goes By—had entered our lives: by bringing us back together. So now you know how Casablanca should really end: instead of packing Ilsa onto the plane with boring, noble, sexless Victor, Rick entices her to stay by buying a malamute puppy. Rick goes to veterinary school, Ilsa joins the Dog Writers Association of America, and they get married and set up housekeeping in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Ilsa becomes the dog’s coowner and foolishly persuades the Cambridge Dog Training Club to donate lessons to the Avon Hill School’s auction, and...
    “So, Steve,” said Steve pointedly, “how did you like rally?”
    “You liked it,” I said. “I knew you would.”
    “And you,” he said with a glint in his eye, “like a challenge. This time, you might’ve taken on more than you can manage.”
    “Dolfo. Dolfo, I’ll have you know, isn’t a dog.”
    “I know. I’m a vet. Remember?”
    “He’s a fur person. Therefore, he doesn’t wear a collar, is never on leash, and, as you probably noticed, isn’t neutered, and, more to the point, isn’t house-trained, the point being that his owners, Ted and Eumie, are frantic because it’s impossible to keep good help these days if one of the requirements is cleaning up after the dog. Except that Ted and Eumie are not frantic. They are having a family crisis.”
    “And you’re going to rescue them.”
    “Steve, I couldn’t sic them on the club! They’re impossible. It was my fault they were there. They won us at the Avon Hill auction.”
    “I kind of liked seeing them there. They reminded me of the birds at my feeders. One or two cardinals for every five hundred house sparrows. Colorful.”
    “That’s one word for it.”
    “I wonder if Rita knows them.”
    She did. When we got home, Rita was in our little fenced yard with my cousin Leah and our third malamute, Kimi, one of my original two. Kimi was dark, intense, and tough. Although Rowdy and Sammy were also dark gray and white, Kimi had a “full mask,” as it’s called, with a black cap, a black bar down her muzzle, and goggles around her eyes. The boys, Rowdy and Sammy, had white faces with no dark markings, and both were far more lighthearted than my fundamentally serious Kimi. As to toughness, if (doG forbid) she’d gotten into a major fight with either of the males, she’d have inflicted more damage than she’d have sustained. Fortunately, she and Rowdy were old friends, and she adored Sammy, who was as close as she’d ever have to her own puppy. That’s not speculation. I left Kimi intact so that my cousin Leah could handle her to her breed championship. (Breed: conformation, the judging