Gaits of Heaven

attack dog! You know that. And even if she were, that’s hardly what Caprice needs. Aren’t you leaving soon?“
    “As soon as I get dressed.”
    “Then get dressed, and stop badgering Caprice.”
    “She isn’t,” Caprice said.
    After that, I fed the dogs and washed greens for a salad. Leah, of course, was eating out, and Steve was going to a veterinary meeting that included dinner, so there’d be only two of us to feed. After that, since Caprice’s anxiety seemed to have infected me, I took a shower and simultaneously listened to the CD that Eumie had given me. The imagery was becoming more and more effective each time I listened. Of course, it was one thing to feel peaceful and calm in a relaxing shower and quite another to feel equally comfortable during a performance event with a potentially wild-acting and therefore humiliating Alaskan malamute. Still, I was learning to pretend that something wonderful was just about to happen, and the resulting happiness was beginning to make headway against my recollections of what I’ll euphemistically call malamute reality. I got out of the shower feeling grateful to Eumie for her gift and clear about the need to attend this meeting as the ally of Eumie’s daughter and of Eumie’s dog.
    After getting dressed, I checked my e-mail. So much for my feeling that something wonderful was about to happen! As if to teach me the distinction between fantasy and reality, a message from a friend with malamutes conveyed the sad news that Monty had died—not Caprice’s father, I hasten to add, but the real Monty, as I thought of him, Ch. Benchmark’s Captain Montague, ROM, Phyllis Hamilton’s great dog. ROM stands for Register of Merit. The title, highly coveted by breeders, is conferred by our national breed club, the Alaskan Malamute Club of America, on a dog with eight or more champion offspring or a bitch with five or more. I called Phyllis immediately.
    “I just heard about Monty,” I said. “I had to call. I am so sorry.”
    Phyllis thanked me. In spite of her grief, her voice was as clear, warm, and musical as ever. “He was fine until a week ago. He’d just celebrated his fourteenth birthday. Every one of my dogs is special, but maybe just once, we breed that extraspecial one. I am so grateful that God gave this one to me.”
    It’s an unwritten rule of the Dog Fancy that breeders must take pride in the accomplishments of their dogs. Few breeders, however, possess the grace to give credit where it’s due, as Phyllis had just done.
    “I remember Monty so well,” I said. “He had incredible bone. And everyone said, ‘Nobody moves like Monty.’ He had such presence, such great dignity. Phyllis, he really was majestic.”
    “Monty knew who he was,” Phyllis continued. “He was so defined. He had a consciousness, a deep sense of who he was.”
    The same, I thought, could not be said of Sammy. “Was he always like that?” I asked.
    “No! His sense of who he was, the wave, really, began building when he was six or seven. Like with some men.” We both laughed lightly. “It’s only when they’re middle-aged that they begin to be defined.”
    We talked for a few more minutes before Phyllis’s sorrow overcame her ability to focus on the fourteen years of joy that Monty had given her. When I hung up, I had tears in my eyes, in part because I was sharing Phyllis’s grief, but in part because I was moved by the difference between my own extended family in the world of dogs and the network of the Brainard-Green family. In our malamute community, we shared passionate love for the breed and for our individual dogs, and we reached out to support one another in times of pain and loss. I felt terrible sadness at the contrast between the talk I’d just had with Phyllis and the meeting I was about to attend.
     

CHAPTER 44
     
    Loyal as I am to the canine cosmological faith of my parents, I reject the notion of coincidence: delve deeply into any apparently haphazard phenomenon, and you’ll find evidence not merely of a governing principle but of an archetypal being whose all-pervasive presence reveals to the eyes of the devout the wondrous order hidden beneath seeming chaos and the joyous meaning of what nonbelievers misinterpret as muddled pointlessness. In brief, when the Almighty plays dice with the universe, they are dog-loaded dice. Such were the thoughts that filled my mind when I arrived at Ted Green’s and was filled with the awe-inspiring realization