Ruffly Speaking

authorized Bil Jac distributor in Moscow, and eventually adds a successful U-Wash-Em pet grooming facility. Ivan Fyodorovitch breeds borzois, pursues lure coursing, and cheers up. Alyosha, D.V.M., joins a lucrative upper-crust small-animal practice. Happy family of real dog people. Nothing to moon or bicker about. Ergo, no plot. But this hearing-loss expert? What was his excuse?
    The deceitful book was, however, where I learned to make sure that Stephanie was looking at me when I began talking to her. For instance, instead of addressing Stephanie while she was stowing the leftover fruit tart in the depths of the refrigerator, I transferred my attention to Ruffly—not that it ever wanders far from the nearest dog—and had just begun to move toward him when, WHAM—all at once, his big ears folded flat, and he jerked his head as if he’d been walloped. What I saw looked exactly like hand shyness.
    But where was the invisible hand from which Ruffly shied? Alien spacecraft hovering over Highland? And, no, Morris Lamb’s house had not been built on the site of an ancient pet cemetery. To judge from the way Morris’s glass cube was awkwardly jammed against Alice Savery’s yard, it had probably been erected on the site of nothing more ominous than a delphinium border, so relax. Holly Winter, not Stephen King. And in case you’ve forgotten —or maybe never knew before—dogs really do hallucinate. A particularly weird form of the disorder occurs in the King Charles spaniel; the affected animals persist in trying to catch imaginary flies. Isn’t it interesting to be a dog writer? And you thought Stephen King was strange. But does Stephen King know about hallucinatory fly chomping in the King Charles spaniel? Probably not. Stephen King is strictly make-believe. If you’re after the truly freakish, check out reality.
    That’s where I started. As I’ve mentioned, Ruffly looked like a mix of a lot of different breeds, but the King Charles spaniel wasn’t one of them, and Ruffly just didn’t strike me as a dog who’d had a momentary brainstorm. Canine distemper can produce a fly-biting syndrome, but the immunized Ruffly had just passed one of Steve Delaney’s exhaustive neurological exams. Besides, Ruffly was wincing, not snapping at insects.
    The episode lasted only a few seconds. When it ended, Ruffly’s head returned to its normal position, but he kept his ears pinned flat, and he acted vaguely confused or disoriented. He moved first toward one of the glass-paneled doors, then scuttled to Stephanie, who was closing the refrigerator door. When he reached her, he trained huge, puzzled eyes on her face and pawed at the skirt of her dress as if he wanted to tell her something.
    I shouted, just the way the book said not to. “Stephanie, it happened! Ruffly... Stephanie, this dog is reacting to something.” During the episode, I’d had my eyes exclusively on Ruffly. If I remembered correctly, he’d been watching Stephanie. But I wasn’t positive. And I might have missed some stimulus that had triggered that dramatic response. “I’m going to look outside,” I said hurriedly. “It’s possible...”
    With that, I went tearing out to the deck and down the stairs to the backyard, where I paused a second to get my bearings. Floodlights illuminated the lawn and the raised bed, but the rhododendrons and azaleas at the sides and the rear of the property were big, dark lumps that could have been anything. I held still and listened. A car passed on Highland. I tried to remember whether I even knew the layout of Morris’s yard. What separated his cube from Alice Savery’s colonial wedding cake, it seemed to me, was, first, a narrow walk that led to his yard and deck, then a thin row of tall bushes—lilacs, maybe—and then, beyond the bushes, perhaps ten feet of grass and flowers that belonged to Miss Savery. Just as I headed for the walkway, bright floods suddenly came on; a motion detector had sensed my presence.
    Faith in the crime-deterrent powers of light always amazes me. If you were a burglar, a mugger, or a murderer, would a little harmless illumination send chills down your spine? Does a stupid little light bulb really calm your fears? Of course not. So if you’re scared, quit assuming that every criminal is Count Dracula! Get a dog! Get a great big dog!
    Still unconvinced? The motion sensor did for me precisely what it would have done for an intruder— lighted my way and sped my progress. As I dashed