Ruffly Speaking

look of impatience, he demanded, “Could we talk about the dog now?”
    Bernadette laughed and ran her hands through her shaggy hair.
    “Of course,” I said.
    Ivan was eager. “Do you want to see the yard? The fence is five feet, eleven and three-quarters inches high.”
    “He measured it,” Bernadette told me.
    “Uh, we need to slow down a little,” I said reluctantly. “You know, Ivan, it’s important to make sure that this is a good time for you to get a dog at all, a good time for both of you, you and your mother.”
    “We had a dog before,” Ivan said.
    “Oh, you did?” In case you’re not involved in rescue, I should explain that if a prospective adopter’s last dog lived to fifteen, I’m impressed. But if the last dog got hit by car? Or died of heartworm because the people were too stingy to pay for preventive medication? Sobbing means nothing, by the way. People will go out their way to guarantee that Rover gets run over or dies of parvo or lepto, and then, once he’s not going to cost them anything, they get choked up and teary-eyed while telling you how much they loved the dog they murdered.
    “Oh,” I said. “What was your dog’s name?” Ivan was dry-eyed, but I wasn’t about to ask a kid who’d lost his father to talk about the death of his dog.
    “Ivan—” Bernadette began.
    But Ivan got in ahead of her. “American Canadian Bermudian Champion Inuit’s Wooly Bully.” He even managed to get it out with a straight face. I’ve mentioned the pretty boy before. International Ch. Inuit’s Wooly Bully, ROM—three countries. International; ROM, Register of Merit, sired five or more champions—was an Alaskan malamute bred and owned by Sheila Balch, not Ivan Flynn-Isaacson, who hadn’t even been born when Floyd died. Floyd. Call name. Pretty boy. Get it?
    Bernadette had finished slopping the boiling water into a Melitta cone precariously balanced on a hand-painted pottery pitcher. When she poured the coffee, it spilled on her hand and all around the dime-store mugs. She didn’t seem to mind. She gave me mine and said gently, “Ivan, our dog was named Hector.” To me she said, “Hector died when Ivan was only two.”
    “I remember him!” Ivan insisted belligerently. “Maybe you do,” Bernadette said. “And you’ve seen a lot of pictures of him.”
    I drank some coffee. It was surprisingly good. “What kind of dog was Hector?” I asked.
    “A mutt,” Bernadette said. “A little brown dog. He belonged to an old man we knew, and when the man had to go into a nursing home, we took Hector, and he was already seven by then, and he lived another ten years. To seventeen.”
    “Hector did tricks,” Ivan added.
    “He did,” Bernadette agreed, smiling. “That’s true. We didn’t teach him; he knew them when we got him. He was like a little circus dog. He could dance on his hind legs, and before he got old, he could walk on his front legs, too. He was a wonderful dog.”
    Hector sounded wonderful to me. He also sounded nothing whatsoever like an Alaskan malamute. I was feeling guilty and rotten. With Rowdy’s inadvertent help, Leah and I had roused Ivan’s longing for a malamute. We’d built up his hope of actually getting one. From a malamute’s point of view, there was nothing wrong with the home that Ivan and Bernadette could provide— fenced yard, someone at home a lot—but no matter how interested the child, the real dog owner is always the Parent, and I was far from sure that Bernadette shared Ivan’s eagerness. And if she’d raised a mere child to become as trouble-prone as Ivan, what could she do with a malamute? My other concern was Ivan’s size. A wiry, strong-looking kid, he was nonetheless too small to control a dog with the bulk and power of the average malamute, and it made no sense to get him a dog that was too big for him.
    “Ivan,” I said, “your mother and I need to have a private talk. Is there somewhere you can go?”
    “No,” he said.
    “Ivan! Of course there is,” Bernadette told him. “Why don’t you take your books to your room?”
    “Because—”
    “Please just do it!”
    When Ivan had reluctantly gathered up his dog books and departed, I bluntly told Bernadette that I was afraid that all of us had set Ivan up for disappointment. Most malamutes outweighed him, and, regardless of size, they were all born to pull. No child could take full responsibility for a dog, and children’s initial enthusiasm sometimes vanished