Paws before dying

guy who has shelties, was standing nearby with his arms folded over his chest. Suddenly the blond handler hauled on the dog’s lead, dragged the poor shepherd to his feet, and shouted at the judge so that everyone heard: “Well, screw you! You hear that? Screw all of you!” Heading for the parking lot, he added, “Come on, Willie. Let's get the hell out of here.”
    “Poor Willie,” Leah said. “How totally embarrassing.”
    “Jesus,” I said. “The poor dog. And the poor judge. You know, things like this don’t happen. This is not what it’s like.”
    “I saw a bumper sticker on a car the other day,” Leah said. “It said: ‘Shit happens.’ I couldn’t figure out what it meant. I guess this is what it meant.” She looked at me and smiled.
    She had that special gift of making things all right again. One of her other gifts was King Solomon’s ring, the one that let him talk with animals. She and Kimi ended up with an impressive 192 1/2 (out of that perfect 200) and a second-place ribbon. Rowdy, who lost points for slowing down before the drop and for some sloppy sits, got a 187 and third place. Four ribbons — two for qualifying, two for placing—is pretty spectacular if the two dogs are Alaskan malamutes and it’s one handler’s first time in the ring.
    The standard color for a first-place ribbon at a trial is blue, but at a match, it’s rose. I’d missed the Utility awards, but on the way out, we ran into the suitably named Rose Englemanj who had her first-place ribbon in one hand and Caprice’s thin blue lead in the other. Caprice was bouncing around and showing off.
    “Congratulations,” I said to both of them. Then I got down; to business. “How did Heather do?”
    “Second,” Rose said. “By one point.” Handlers like Rose and Heather, I might add, often enter fun matches noncompetitively. That night, though, each had clearly decided that the other’s presence justified her own competition. Even so, Rose did not brag about her own score. She didn’t even tell me what it was.
    Í like to remember her exactly as she was in those few minutes on that sultry night, a first-place ribbon in one hand, her dog’s lead in the other, listening with the enthusiasm of an ardent! newcomer as Leah went on and on about things that Rose must have heard a thousand times. She’d heard them all before, but she never heard them again. The next evening, as I learned later,; she took Caprice to the abandoned tennis court at Eliot Park-As they were training, the heat and humidity that had been building over the past few days finally broke in another of the violent electric storms and downpours we’d been having all summer. Rose was prepared for the rain, I heard. She had on a set of those waterproof pants and jackets you usually see on runners about a third her age. Jack gave her the outfit for Christmas, he told me later. He picked out the color to match her eyes: electric blue. Maybe he’d had a premonition. Lightning strikes farmers. It hits people who are swimming or fishing or playing golf. I’d never heard of it killing anyone who was out training a dog, but ordinary handlers quit when rain starts. Top handlers train for all weather conditions and all distractions. If the Flood itself had let loose and God had boomed out a Commandment, Caprice would have been prepared. Maybe Caprice was. It was Rose who reached out and touched the metal door of the all-metal chain link fence.
     

Chapter 6

     
    THE human denizens of dogdom are America’s last true villagers. Every kennel club is a tiny town with strong home-group loyalties and a complex network of bonds with its neighbors: ties of history, rivalry, and divided allegiance. Like villagers flooding a market town, we gather en masse at dog shows, not only to transact our practical business but to renew our sense of oneness with our fellow citizens of the great and noble Republic of the American Kennel Club.
    Bess Stein, Leah’s Novice instructor at the AKC-member Nonantum Dog Training Club, had been judging lately at States Kennel Club and Continental Dog Association trials as well as teaching at two clubs on the south shore. During World War II, she worked with my own Cambridge Dog Training Club in the Dogs for Defense program that recruited and trained canine soldiers, and more than a decade afterward, she bought a golden retriever from my mother. All this is to say that it was Bess who called me on Saturday afternoon with the news of