Paws before dying

presence in portrait after portrait of six or eight members of the bridal party, which, with the exception of my parents themselves, consisted entirely of golden retrievers. The highlight of the ceremony occurred as my mother marched down the aisle preceded by a flower girl who bore a basket of orange blossoms in her mouth and an usher whose task it was to thrust his muzzle into the basket and strew jawfuls of petals on his trainer’s route to holy matrimony. Marissa, I believe, forgave her sister for forgoing the exchange of vows but not for missing the sight of that perfect brace in action.
    The dogs’ performance did not, however, pass unnoticed or unrewarded. After joining my parents in wedlock, the minister presented large white ribbons to the attendants. He had the authority to make the awards, of course; he was—and still is—ordained by the American Kennel Club as well as by the Episcopal church. My father, in fact, insists that Dr. Hooper performed the wedding itself in his capacity as an AKC obedience judge and that his affiliation with a secondary religious organization was incidental.
    Cassie and Arthur sent nothing at all when I was born, probably because the birth announcement, designed by my sire and dam, took the form of a pink premium list for a golden retriever specialty show. Cassie probably thought that Marissa’s mail had reached her by mistake, or else Arthur opened the envelope, succumbed to a dander-driven sneezing fit, and discarded the announcement unread. More likely, Cassie and Arthur simply failed to realize that the new puppy bitch was human. It’s not their fault. My name is Holly Winter.
    My aunt and her husband, then, can’t be blamed for missing the point of my birth announcement, nor can my parents really be held responsible for their difficulty in deciphering my cousin Leah’s, which we received when I was about sixteen. Unlike all previous birth announcements sent by Buck and Marissa’s friends and family, this one was not headed: “Litterbox News” or “Something to Howl About.” They were also puzzled about why the new owners had failed to specify Leah’s breed. Marissa, though, rationalized her sister’s slip: If the breed went without saying, Cassie’s pup was assuredly a golden retriever.
    Because of subsequent bad feeling between our families, as well as Arthur’s allergies, I saw almost nothing of Leah during her puppyhood and do not know whether she enjoyed retrieving the special imported English hard-rubber, chew-proof balls sent by my mother together with a typewritten list of tips on house training. Even when Marissa died and Cassie was obviously grieved—and probably sorry she’d missed the wedding—Buck didn’t forgive her or Arthur, because he still considered them poor sports and moral weaklings for having violated Section 24 of the AKC obedience regulations: “Dogs must compete.”
    In fact, before Leah moved in with me, I hadn’t seen her for about ten years, not only because Buck stopped sending whelping announcements to her parents after my mother died but also because Leah’s family had left Boston for a small college town in central Maine, and I’d meanwhile left Maine, gone to college, and moved to Cambridge. It must have been my grandmother who first told them that I live here. Although my editor includes a little biographical information with my column, something tells me that Arthur and Cassie don’t subscribe to Dog's Life magazine and seldom even pick it up at the newsstand.
    Partly because Cassie’s voice sounds remarkably like Marissa’s, especially over the phone, her rare calls always startle me.
    My mother is often with me, but when she speaks in my ear, I usually recognize the source as internal. Besides, I’m always stunned to hear my mother’s voice discussing any topic except dogs, and Cassie usually drones on about people, including Arthur and Leah. One of the joys of dog ownership is liberation from the boring self-centeredness to which Cassie’s loveless marriage has doomed her, or so said Marissa, to whom a loveless marriage was any union not blessed with canine progeny.
    As my mother would wish, then, I pity Cassie and listen to her blather on. I even phone her once in a while, and we exchange Christmas cards. Last year, for instance, my card showed a breathtaking color photograph of Rowdy, one of my two Alaskan malamutes, in his new red harness, pulling a sled across the snow-covered lawn at Owls Head, where