Paws before dying

That’s what’s bothering me most, I think. A lot of things can screw up a pacemaker, and a lot of people had something against her. Like Jack’s family. She wasn’t Jewish, and when he married her, they sat shiva. And then at the house, his sister was there, and his father was arriving, and it felt like a sort of family reunion. And there are other people, people who had some kind of case against her. One is that son of a bitch Martori, the judge. You know who he is? She got him reprimanded. And there were these other people she accused of child abuse. Anyhow, the fact is, there were a lot of people who weren’t happy to have her alive.”
     

Chapter 10

     
    I woke up the next morning with Heather, Abbey, and double handling on my mind. Obedience competition, it seemed to me, is a game that combines a giant version of bridge with an elaborate form of solitaire. You have a partner, so do lots of other players, and one of your aims is to do better than they do, but your main contest is the one you play with yourself. Double handling is as dirty as cheating at cards and as pointless as cheating at solitaire, which is not to say that it’s easy, especially if it’s as smooth as Heather and Abbey’s.
    Rowdy was sleeping on the floor under the rattly old Hot-point portable air conditioner, but before I opened my eyes, I heard him stir, and a couple of seconds later, I could feel him staring at me. You may be able to convince your spouse, your lover, or even your children that you’re still asleep when you’re not, but you can’t fool a dog.
    “Good morning, buddy,” I said.
    He wagged his entire rear end and made that funny face mala-mutes put on when they’d like to bark like normal dogs, but don’t remember how. Then he woo-wooed at me, and I gave up and got up. When I’d let him out and in, measured out exactly one cupful of ANF30, put it in his bowl, and watched him devour half of it before the bowl hit the floor, I stood there in the kitchen and thought about malamutes and Jews, about my own family and Leah’s, and about Jack Engleman’s—in other words, about insiders and outsiders. Before that odd early morning moment, I’d assumed that no one with four WASP grandparents could grasp Jack’s family’s response to Rose and their marriage, but it came to me that the relationship between Leah’s parents and my own was in some ways as if they had sat shiva for each other. From my parents’ viewpoint, the problem with Arthur—and Cassie, ever since she married him— wasn’t anything he’d done, anything personal. The real issue was that we were dog people, but Arthur belonged to another clan. All of the personal gripes stemmed from that radical objection: He wasn’t one of us. Well, so what?
    This is where malamutes and Jews come in, and don’t be offended. I’m serious. To my way of thinking, you see, the Alaskan malamute is, honest to God, God’s chosen dog, and no matter how much I love and admire dogs of any and all other breeds, I don’t want my malamutes jeopardizing the identity of their clan, because if enough of them do, there won’t be any clan anymore. How come? Because malamutes are so much better than other dogs? As bird dogs, guard dogs, or lapdogs, they’re useless, and if you try to get a mal to herd sheep, he’ll herd them directly into his stomach. A golden retriever, sheltie, German shepherd, poodle, border collie, or the average specimen of fifty or sixty other breeds, not to mention the average all-American mixed breed dog, is a better obedience prospect than the average malamute. Siberian huskies are faster racing dogs, bloodhounds track better than malamutes do, and if I ever lost my sight, even I wouldn’t trust a mal as a guide dog. Superior? No. Just different. Wonderful. Special. Chosen. And don’t think I’m confusing dogs with people, either. I don’t know whether Jews are different from other people, but that’s not the point. What I understood was the feeling people have about belonging to a clan and the importance people can attach to preserving it. I wouldn’t have bred Rowdy to Vinnie, my best golden ever, and there wouldn’t have been anything personal about it. Is it fair to have the same attitude toward people? I didn’t know, but I was beginning to understand the feeling.
    “So,” I said to Rowdy, “the hypothetical situation is this: You get loose and fall hopelessly in love with a golden retriever. You won’t look at another mal,