Ruffly Speaking

finished, I said that the area, Longwood, was lovely—it is—but Mr. Winer wasn’t paying attention. He twisted restlessly around and looked here and there until he caught sight of Doug, who was five or six yards behind us listening to an impeccably groomed young woman with the brisk, confident air of a professional handler. Her blue-flowered dress matched the thin blue show lead in her hand. At the dog’s end of the lead pranced Ch. Marigleam’s Canadian Lovesong (Nelson to his friends), who paused midfrolic to lick the pretty woman’s hand, then Doug’s.
    Want some free advice? If so, ask a real dog person. You can’t shut us up. Here it is: With some breeds, amateurs do fine in conformation, but if you want to show your terrier, hire the best professional handler you can afford, because if you go out there and stumble around yourself, no judge will so much as look at your dog. Too bad, but that’s the truth. Morris Lamb knew it. So, evidently, did Doug Winer.
    I glanced at Doug’s father, who was beaming so jovially that his entire hairless head practically glowed. He turned toward me, winked, took another look at his son and the pretty handler, and in proud paternal tones murmured, “Doug has his eye on that one! Just you watch!”
    Any object of Doug’s amorous regard would so absolutely, totally, definitely, and unconditionally have been male that I found it almost impossible to imagine how anyone could suppose otherwise. But Mr. Winer wasn’t just anyone.
    Kennel blindness takes all kinds of forms. In dog fancy, of course, it means the inability to see the faults of your own dogs. Daphne’s owners, for example, probably don’t realize that her ears are a little big and slightly high set, at least by contrast with Rowdy’s, which are small in proportion to the size of his head and set exactly where they belong, on the sides, just as the standard says. Also, Daphne’s tail is rather short, and she doesn’t-have the best neck I’ve ever seen, either. But then some judges either don’t read the standard or don’t recognize it even when it materializes in the ring. You’ve seen Rowdy, right? You’ve seen him move ? Incredible dog. The standard incarnate.
    But the point about Doug and his father isn’t that Doug had a major fault in terms of the standard for human beings, because there isn’t any one standard for all of us. There couldn’t be, any more than there could be a single standard for Saint Bernards, Bernese mountain dogs, Chihuahuas, and all the others. We don’t vary in size and shape as radically as dogs do, but in our own way, we’re equally diverse, aren’t we?
    Am I making myself clear? Suppose the standard you’re using is for the Great Dane, when, in reality, your dog is a Chesapeake Bay retriever. Enter kennel blindness. Love that dog enough and before long, you’re going to convince yourself that, according to the standard, your Chessie is a flawless specimen of an entirely different breed. Maybe he is faultless, but that’s not the point. The point is that you’re using the wrong standard.
    And if your Chessie has the option of barking out the truth? That you’ve made a fool of yourself? That you don’t know the first thing about your own dog? Caught in that situation, any Chessie with any sense is going to worry that if you find out, you’ll be heartbroken. Maybe you’ll even decide that you don’t want a Chessie at all. Maybe you never liked Chessies, or never thought you did, anyway. Maybe the shock will be more than you can take. So if your Chessie really loves you? And knows how much you need him? Well, then, maybe he’s going to act just like Doug. He’s going to let you go right on admiring your perfect Great Dane.
     

6
     
     Late on a Friday afternoon a couple of weeks after the Essex County show, the dogs and I were heading back from the river. According to Rowdy and Kimi, we were supposed to be retracing our steps and taking the direct route by following Appleton Street from where it begins, at Brattle Street, to where it ends, at Concord Avenue, home being 256 Concord Avenue, the bam red house at the corner of Appleton. I, however, had led us to Fayerweather and then onto Reservoir Street. Just when Rowdy and Kimi had more or less reconciled themselves to Reservoir, though, we came to the intersection with Highland Street, where they balked and I coaxed. Highland Street was not one of the direct routes home, I conceded. Highland did, however,