Paws before dying

back around it. “Jump!” I yelled silently, and he sprang up nicely, clearing the top with room to spare, returned briskly, and sat only a trifle crooked to present the dumbbell.
    Rowdy and I had only a short break before the group exercises, just enough time to get some water in, on, and under him and to learn that Kimi had qualified. As I returned to the ring at the end of the long down, I spotted a dark blotch in the shade under the judge’s table, but it turned out to be someone else’s blotch, a black standard poodle who’d decided it was better to be out of the sun than in the ribbons. Rowdy was impatiently twitching his plumy white tail back and forth, but he was where I’d left him, and unless he’d taken a stroll in my absence, he’d qualified.
    Back in the shade, Leah was pouring water into Kimi’s bowl.
    “So?” I said.
    “So we qualified.” She sounded as if there’d never been any doubt, but the excitement showed on her face.
    “Great!” I upended a water jug on top of my head, sent a cold stream down my back, took a big swig, and poured the rest into Rowdy’s bowl. Then I rummaged in my kit bag for the dogs’ rewards, outsize dog biscuits I reserve for shows. The dogs were nuzzling and salivating, but as I pulled out the biscuits, Kimi vanished, and Rowdy hit the end of his leash. When I looked up, Abbey was holding out two closed fists. Rowdy was bouncing and eyeing her hands, and Kimi, the furry piranha, was about to strike.
    “Okay?” Abbey said. “Homemade microwave liver.”
    Heather and Panache were nowhere in sight.
    “Sure,” I said. “They’ve earned it. Thanks.”
    The dogs snatched the brown stuff from her hands and licked her palms clean, but she scrubbed her hands with a towel, anyway.
    “Sorry, guys,” I said to the dogs as I gave them the biscuits. “Second best, but all I’ve got. Microwave, huh?”
    Abbey nodded. “Works like magic.”
    “I do liver in the oven sometimes,” I said, “but not in the summer. It takes forever, and you can’t get rid of the smell.”
    “You ought to get a microwave,” Abbey said. “You just throw it in and nuke it. We got it from Rose because she didn’t trust it after she got the pacemaker. You knew about that?”
    I nodded.
    “Well, after she got it, the microwave made her nervous. I gather that if they don’t work just so, they mess up the pacemaker. Hers was okay, but she wanted to get rid of it, anyway, and she gave it to us, and there’s nothing wrong with it. You ought to get one.”
    “Obviously, the dogs think so,” I said.
    Soon afterward, Heather and Panache came dancing back on silver heels, and a couple of minutes later, the stewards started calling us back into the rings—that is, those whose dogs had qualified. A sweet-faced young woman and her Bernese mountain dog stood just in front of Rowdy and me at the head of the line along the edge of the ring. The Bernese mountain dog happens to be one of my favorite breeds. They’re big, strong dogs with long, silky black coats and white and rust markings, gorgeous dogs and loving, loyal companions. This one was a very feminine-looking bitch, probably too small to show in breed, but a first-rate obedience worker. I’d seen her at other shows, and I’d watched her today.
    “She’s doing great,” I said to her handler. “I saw her today.”
    “Yeah, she’s finally shaping up,” the woman said.
    “She looks great. Did you have some...?”
    “Yeah, she started giving me a hard time, and I had to get out the old electronics. But that took care of that.” She smiled and patted the dog’s head. I wanted to kick her.
    The Bernese mountain dog got first place, of course, but when the judge handed me the second-place ribbon and a drinking glass for the collection, Rowdy knew who’d really won. When people applauded, he woo-wooed, and as the judge kept handing out the ribbons, he kept it up, and some of the spectators started laughing. The Bernese won first place and my sympathy, but Rowdy won the crowd.
    “Happy worker,” commented the handler of the Bernese mountain dog, meaning that Rowdy had never been serious competition. “Congratulations. ”
    “Thanks.” I walked away. “She thinks I’m a sore loser,” I told Rowdy. “Let her.”
    Against some mean competition in Novice B—it looked like a poodle breed ring—Kimi won third place, plus yet another tumbler, and Leah underwent a rapid shift in apparent age from a cool twenty-one to an