Ruffly Speaking

great blooming, buzzing confusion.’ ”
    “Well, I’m glad you’re pleased,” Rita said.
    I was, too. “One great blooming, buzzing confusion.” The perfect description of a dog show. Birth and rebirth.Life itself. I like it all.
     

8
     
     Leah and I are first cousins on the human maternal side; our mothers were sisters. But superficial human kinship means little to either of us. What really makes us blood relatives is that Leah handles Kimi in obedience. Until the previous summer, Leah’s parents, Arthur and Cassie, had kept Leah in strict quarantine from the highly contagious world of purebred dog fancy, but it took Rowdy and Kimi about five minutes to infect her, and after three months with us, she was a hopeless case. When her parents first sent Leah to us, she called all sled dogs huskies, thought of heel as something on the rear of her foot, and imagined that a camelback had something to do with mountains. By the end of August, all she talked about were paddling gaits, snap tails, standoff coats, Dudley noses, clean lips, deep briskets, CHD, PRA, HITs, BISs, and bitches that didn’t take; and when she liked something a whole lot, she produced the ultimate doggy compliment: typey. By then, Leah’s supposedly educated parents could no longer understand a single word she said, and I’m convinced that they began to feel inferior, but the last straw, so to speak, came when Leah mentioned the possibility that she and Kimi might one day become OTCH fodder, and Arthur and Cassie decided that since the phrase sounded dangerously reminiscent of cannon fodder, it must be communist and that she’d better get out of their house and begin to outgrow her socialist youth as soon as possible.
    (What is OTCH fodder, you ask? Well, okay, here we go. A dog that continues to compete after he earns his U.D.—Utility Dog title—accumulates championship points for each first or second place in Open or Utility, Open B, of course, and Utility B, if it’s divided. When the dog has 100 points, he becomes an OTCH dog, Obedience Trial Champion, and, having done so, keeps on competing for OTCH points against dogs that aren’t earning any because, of course, he is. Those dogs, the ones that make it possible for him to get the points, are— you guessed it—OTCH fodder. And while we’re on the topic, let me add that far from being socialist, communist, or even vaguely communal, OTCH competition is the ultimate in capitalism. It’s survival of the fittest, socio-canine Darwinism, and the only thing even remotely pinko about it is nature’s tooth and claw red, in other words, the sharp teeth and well-filed claws of the top handlers.
    Where were we?... Oh, so Arthur and Cassie would probably have been glad to have Leah leave Maine for Cambridge in mid-June so they wouldn’t have to listen to her talk above their heads all summer, but with intelligent malamute opportunism more characteristic of Kimi and Rowdy than of me, Leah had taken triple advantage of Harvard’s ungodly tuition, her parents’ tightwad tendencies, and their academic snobbery to get a paying job at what I innocently called a day camp, but what Leah patiently explained was not a mere camp but the Avon Hill Summer Program. Once Leah spelled out the difference, it made sense. Privileged Cambridge children do not squander their summers rallying round the flagpole; they take courses. They don’t go to camp; they attend programs. Camps, of course, have counselors. Schools have teachers. Summer programs? Leah’s official job title was, I swear to God, mentor .
    Leah was due to arrive here on Friday, June 12, and to begin work on Monday, the first of two days of intensive staff training that would prepare the mentors for the arrival of the children—mentees?—on Wednesday. Although Leah wanted Arthur to drop her at the bus station in Portland, he insisted on driving her here, why, I can’t imagine—on the rare occasions we’ve met, Arthur has acted even more afraid of me than of my dogs—but he won out, and at five o’clock on Friday, into my driveway pulled his dented old blue Volvo wagon with one window half-full of the brightly colored campus parking permits that Arthur collects the way I collect show trophies, or did back when I had golden retrievers, anyway; and not a single bumper sticker anywhere expressing anything that might be misread as enthusiasm about anyone or any cause. Good old Arthur. Fortunately, Leah takes after our side of the