Paws before dying

that, and I say, ‘Well, Don, now that we’re on the subject of needles, you ever try electric shock?”
    “There is that,” I said. “Or what if you ask something about behavior? Like, tell him you have a client with two malamutes that fight, and ask if acupuncture helps. Then we’ll at least know if he’s a big proponent of shock collars, because if he is, he’ll say that’s the answer.”
    “And let him think...? Hell, no. Anyway, we don’t know much about him, but we do know he does alternatives, right? You know anything about homeopathy? You know what they use? Powders. Herbs. They call them gentle remedies.”
    “Okay. A shock collar’s not exactly a gentle remedy. Well, we already know he’d know where to get one. So his mother would, too, presumably, if she saw the catalogs. And we know he uses needles. Obviously, he can’t be exactly squeamish. I guess mostly what we need is some kind of feel for what he’s like, and also some idea of the finances.”
    “Piece of cake,” Steve said. “ ‘Tell me about acupuncture, and while you’re at it, mail me your last year’s 1040.’ ”
    “Stop it! What you need to do is commiserate with him. Say something about Cambridge rents, insurance. Think of something to bitch about, and then maybe he’ll tell you about how he’s trying to pay off his student loans or how he wishes he had some new ultrasound equipment or something. Obviously, you can’t drag it out of him, but give him a chance.”
    I hung up with little hope. Steve either does something or he doesn’t. Maybe I should fabricate some ailment in my dogs and ask Zager to cure it. Fine if he prescribed a gentle powder I could throw out, but what if he decided to use needles? Forget it. Steve keeps my dogs up on their shots. Except for that, no one punctures my dogs, acu or otherwise.
    In the early evening, Jeff and Lance, the border collie, stopped in. Rowdy and Kimi leapt around. He woo-wooed, but she turned food-protective when Lance’s eerie eyes wandered toward her water dish, and I hustled them outside to the fenced-in yard.
    Although Leah and I had assembled a tentative list of trials to enter, we hadn’t made any definite decision or completed the entry blanks yet. Jeff joined us in reviewing the possibilities, and he and Leah made the final selections. Then I showed both of them how to complete the forms, did Rowdy’s myself, and wrote out our checks. Meanwhile, Lance maintained a perfect down-stay, his intelligent head resting on his forepaws, those mesmerizing eyes vigilantly monitoring us and whatever we did. Someday, if I’m ever mature enough to handle that all-seeing 8aze, I have to have a border collie. I wondered for a moment about the difficulties of kidnapping one who’s been trained not to cross an invisible, torturous boundary. It seemed to me I could surmount them. It also seemed to me that I could be caught and arrested, and that the court would find against me. “Holly?” Leah startled me. “Are you with us? Are you here?” My mother’s voice and face, with Leah’s own tone and cast, brought me back to earth. “Daydreaming,” I said. “Are we all set?”
    “We are all hungry,” Jeff said cutely. “We are all hungry for pizza, and we are all going to bring it in for you, and we are all getting a movie if Rita will let us use her VCR.”
    As I may have mentioned, I liked the kid a lot.
     

Chapter 22

     
    “HER jumps,” Steve said over Tuesday morning breakfast at my kitchen table.
    Most people look their best when they’ve had eight hours of sleep, but exhaustion becomes him. As soon as he has another veterinarian in the practice with him, his eyes will probably lose that green hue and turn ordinary blue. Their clear, sad expression will get murky and flat. He’ll have time to shave. He went on: “What happened to Rose Engleman’s jumps and hurdles? They’d have nails.”
    In case you’ve never trained beyond Novice, I should mention that for Open, you need a high jump and a set of broad-jump hurdles, and for Utility, both the high jump and a bar jump. Until a few years ago, all jumps were made of wood, and the regulation ones used in trials still are.
    “They were those PVC practice jumps,” I said. “Plastic. You want another English muffin?”
    “Just coffee,” he said. “Thanks.”
    I filled his cup. I don’t always pop up and down to wait on him, but he’d been up since three a.m. removing the chewed pieces and metal squeaker