Paws before dying

years.” She nodded toward the tennis courts. Courts are a great place to train because they’re completely fenced in and at least somewhat suggestive of an obedience ring. The only problem with them is that they’re usually wasted on ridiculous people who insist on batting a ball around when there’s no dog to chase it. “I live around the corner. We’re here every night.”
    “You look great,” I said. She did, too. People who show a lot in the summer have good color, because the typical ring is located in the full sun in the middle of a field, and if you want to be in the ribbons, you have to train a dog under show conditions. Unfortunately, that also means getting out there in the rain, making sure that the dog doesn’t break when thunder crashes, and downing him in puddles. (In case you don’t train dogs, I should mention that that’s downing him—making him lie down—not drowning him.) “Caprice looks terrific, too,” I added.
    A certain type of top obedience handler would then have recounted every detail of her dog’s performance, complete with scores in all the trials in the past year. Not Rose. “This is a sweetie,” she said as she patted Rowdy’s big head. “And who’s your friend handling the bitch? Your sister? Glorious hair.” Her smile leapt at you suddenly, like a toy poodle finishing a recall by unexpectedly bounding into your arms.
    “My cousin,” I said. “She’s easy to find in a crowd.”
    “A knockout,” Rose said. “The boys must be beating her door down. Isn’t that the cutest thing going on over there?”
    I followed her glance and heard Bess Stein’s voice ring out: “Let’s have better spacing here. If the handler in front of you is too slow, just pass him. That’s too slow for the shepherd, and if it happens again, get that malamute ahead of him. Halt.” Bess was fairly free of breedist prejudice, but she talked like all other obedience instructors: “The shepherd,” they say. “The Lab, the golden, the collie,” but always, always, “that malamute.”
    As I watched the border collie almost sit on Kimi’s tail and saw the handler lean toward Leah and say something, I finally got the point. It was a familiar one. Leah had recently proposed the same strategy when she wanted to let Kimi bump into Julia Child to create the opportunity to apologize. I quit looking, not because I can’t deal with someone else getting attention when I’m not, but because the next handler Tony ran through the
    Open routine was a rigidly upright silver-haired woman named Heather Ross with a silver Continental-clipped standard poodle called Panache who knew the exercises better than I did and was being drilled to score a perfect 200 instead of the measly 199 pluses he’d been getting for the past year. I’d watched him before, and every time, he’d wowed me.
    “That’s one of the top obedience dogs around, you know,” a man said. “You know what...”
    “We know,” I said, hoping to cut him off before he accused Heather of bending the rules or complained that the judges always let her get away with correcting her dog in the ring. I caught his eye and shifted my glance to a skinny woman huddled in a lawn chair. “This is Heather’s daughter,” I said. “Co-owner, right?”
    She smiled yes. She knew why I’d interrupted. She probably overheard jealous rumors all the time. Rose’s turn came next, and I was glad to see her give Heather some competition. Although every nonbeatified obedience competitor envies the top handlers, some of the nasty rumors about Heather were well founded. Rose knew all the tricks, too, but she didn’t use them all- Heather, I’m sure, savored Caprice’s performance less than I did. She distracted me while I was trying to watch by telling everyone in mock-sympathetic tones that Rose had been in the hospital not all that long ago and had looked like hell for a while. I said that she looked wonderful and that I liked Caprice a lot. I did, but that’s not the only reason I said so.
    Somewhat later, after the best malamute in the class mouthed his dumbbell and anticipated the high jump, everyone commented on what a happy worker he was. Even the top handlers will offer tremendous support to someone with what’s called a nontraditional obedience breed—and keep offering it until the second you become a threat.
     

Chapter 4

     
    “OH, she did fine,” Leah said. “I’m all sweaty. I’ve never sweated so much in my life. So when