Paws before dying

about it.”
    “I didn’t,” Lisa said.
    “Well, everyone else did.”
    I was so busy listening that I almost lost track of what was happening in the rings. Then I noticed the armband on the handler in Novice B. “Leah, you’re next,” I said. “Go and wait by the ring. Have you been watching the heeling pattern?”
    “Yes, yes, yes,” she said. “Relax. And don’t come with me. Stay here.”
    “You know you can give an extra command,” Heather chimed in from a folding chair. The sun was so strong that even Heather and Abbey, who usually stationed themselves practically inside the ring, were in the shade with the rest of us. Heather had removed her shoes and was daubing neat rectangles of Panache-like silver-gray polish on the backs of the heels. “If she lags, tell her to heel. You know you can do that. You’ll lose points, but don’t let her get away with it.”
    Leah nodded politely, brought Kimi to heel, and trotted off confidently. Her hands weren’t shaking, her knees weren’t knocking, and her face hadn’t turned the usual novice ashen green. As I watched her downshift to a stride, I noticed at the far edge of the field, in the shade of a maple grove, one handler Warming up a dog, heeling him back and forth, drilling him on about-turns. The dog was Righteous. The handler was Willie Johnson. hoped he had the sense to keep Righteous away from the ring while Kimi was working. The sudden appearance of a dog at ringside is a powerful distraction. Willie wouldn’t deliberately plant his shepherd there to ruin Kimi’s performance—it’s done, oh, is it ever—but he was a novice and might do it inadvertently.
    “Doesn’t she look like your mother?” Heather called to me. As I may have pointed out, everyone knew Marissa. “Have you j noticed? She looks a lot like your mother, and she sounds like I her, too. Or maybe you don’t remember.”
    “I remember,” I said. “I remember very well.” Then I stopped talking. I didn’t want the sound of my voice to distract! Kimi.
    With Leah and Kimi in the ring, I finally turned my attention J to the center of the field, where the sun was broiling the dogs J and handlers and had already begun to burn the judges and I stewards. Not a single spectator stood near any of the roped-off rings, and the usual collection of folding chairs, dogs, and waiting exhibitors was absent, as if the sun had worked like a self-cleaning oven to bake them into an invisible powder.
    Does the mental transmission of orders count as double handling? If so, I cheated. Don’t let her down, I commanded Kimi. Watch Leah. Sit. Sit straight. Heel! Sit! Stay, damn it! Don't you move. Don't you dare pull anything. Good girl! Beautiful work!
    Or maybe they did it on their own. Except at the end, when j the ribbons are handed out, applause goes exclusively to very j young junior handlers, real children, not people Leah’s age, and to dog-handier teams that have done something spectacular. If you ask me, anyone who has the guts to walk into an obedience ring with an Alaskan malamute deserves a cheer—it’s like wing-walking on an antique biplane with an unpredictable engine, a senseless act of courage—but sometimes all you get is kindly silence intended to convince you that no one was looking, anyway. That hot day, though, people were watching: Leah’s hair flashed like a beacon, and the temptation to observe how creatively a malamute will fail to qualify is more than most people can resist. At the end of a perfect recall, the last individual Novice exercise, Kimi did a flawless finish, and when Leah released her, the applause was loud, even in the big, open field. Leah and Kimi pranced proudly back. I’m not sure which had the bigger grin or which of them I hugged harder.
    “Leah, that was really beautiful,” I said. “And in this heat? Beautiful. Look, I’ve got to exercise Rowdy and warm him up a little. Give her a treat, and don’t let her drink too much water, just a little at a time, and then cool her off before the sits and downs. Drench her. It’s brutal for them out in that sun, and on a day like this, even a perfect dog will break sometimes.”
    As it was, I did no more than catch their group exercises out of the corner of my eye, because Rowdy and I were busy in another ring, where the ninety-five degrees melted his usual inventiveness. When I sent him over the high jump, he soared, but I could feel him ponder the possibility of ambling slowly and coolly