Paws before dying

toward the famous Out of Town News-Stand, across from the Yard and in walking distance of the Fogg Museum, the Longfellow House, and the Blacksmith House, but Leah was impervious to historical renown. She caught on to the propinquity of contemporary celebrity thanks to the dogs, whose presence in an eating establishment was illegal, but who’d been easy to smuggle into the outskirts and stash under one of the tables that are more on the sidewalk than actually in the café. Practically all my father remembers of his one trip to France is that dogs were allowed in restaurants, and according to an article in a recent issue of Dog Fancy, they’re still welcome. To sneak a dog into an American café called Au Bon Pain is simply to add authenticity, as the proprietors must realize, even though the Cambridge (so-called) Health Department doesn’t. Most dog diseases are species-specific, and there isn’t a single one that a person can catch just by sitting in a café with a dog, whose mere proximity, of course, builds the human immune system so it can fight off the colds, flus, and strep throats spread by the legal customers. Have I digressed?
    Because of our need to protect the francophile café management from knowingly violating the Cambridge restaurant code, We were perfectly positioned to person-watch and were doing Just that when Leah spotted among the passersby a cigar-smoking man whom she recognized as the greatest playwright since Shakespeare, then five minutes later, a tall woman best known as the Barbara Woodhouse of French cooking.
    “She’s really famous!” Leah said in awe. “Everyone knows who she is! Do you think we could ask her to say something?”
    “We’d have to follow her,” 1 pointed out. “And what would we ask her to say?”
    “Preferably,” Leah said, “we could have her wish us Bon appétit. But anything would do. I could bump into her by accident. You know, just jostle her a little, not knock her over or anything.”
    “Good.”
    “And I’d say I was sorry, and then she’d have to say that it was perfectly all right or something. Or maybe Kimi would do something to her, and we’d have to apologize.”
    “Sure,” I said. “All I do is sic my dog on Julia Child. Then we get to hear how she sounds in person. Leah, for one thing, for all I know, she is afraid of dogs.”
    “I’ll bet she isn’t, and if she is, we could at least hear her shriek,” Leah said happily. “It would be better than nothing, wouldn’t it?”
    The same reverence for public renown that sold Leah on Cambridge soon blended with her sense of fairness to sell her on my dog-training plans as well. As soon as she heard that Rowdy had an obedience title, she started making a game of kowtowing to him and calling him Sir Wowee.
    “His name is Rowdy,” I said in defense of his dignity, “not Wowee. And his obedience title is C.D., Companion Dog. It’s the first title. It’s nothing special.” Except for a malamute. In the preceding year, for instance, golden retrievers had earned 814 American Kennel Club C.D.’s, 370 C.D.X.’s, and 127 U.D.’s, and 20 goldens had become O.T.Ch.’s, Obedience Trial Champions. There were 26 Companion Dog malamutes, one Companion Dog Excellent, and not a single Utility Dog that year. Of course, there are more goldens than malamutes, but just ask yourself: Why are there more goldens?
    “And what’s Kimi’s title? She’s probably some kind of world champion.”
    “Rowdy is a champion in breed, too, but Kimi doesn’t have a title in anything.” Then I hammered in the point. “He does, but she doesn’t.”
    What Leah persisted in calling dog school began a couple of days after my preventive rescue of Julia Child. “We’ll eat a little early so we’ll have time to exercise the dogs before we leave,” I said.
    Leah objected: “They had a long walk this morning, and it’s hot out. They don’t need any more exercise.”
    I had to explain that although I usually avoid jargon, I do use “exercise,” a highly technical canine obedience term, because I refuse to say that a dog has to go to the bathroom. Rowdy finished his technical exercise before Kimi, who was somewhere down the block with Leah, and as I was crating him in the back of the Bronco, my next-door neighbor, Kevin Den-nehy, ended his daily run by trotting up and dripping sweat that hit the blacktop in loud splats. Even though Kevin holds a relatively elevated rank—he’s a homicide detective—he