Stud Rites

who cried, ”Oh, you beautiful husky! I just love you!”
    Faced with rebellion in the pen and the presence of a wolflike creature just outside it, the manager lost control in a fashion entirely uncharacteristic of his breed. Raising an arm, he pointed directly at the father of the bride. ”Your daughter,” he boomed, ”was fully informed of the other event that would take place this weekend. She and I discussed it at length and in detail, and she voiced no objection whatsoever.”
    Silence fell in the lobby.
    ”Crystal,” bellowed Mr. Jenkinson, ”is that true?”
    ”It does sort of ring a bell,” Crystal admitted.
    ”A wedding bell,” I whispered to Duke and to Freida Reilly, our show chair, who’d appeared at his side. ”It’s a bridal party,” I continued. ”They didn’t know about, uh, us.”
    To the extent that a national specialty is any one person’s show, it is the chair’s. Within seconds, Freida Reilly had assessed the situation and was taking action. Freida had been trained by experts: Alaskan malamutes and AA. Pointing at Z-Rocks, Freida addressed Timmy Oliver in tones that suggested the implementation of an intensive rehabilitation program in which the participant is kicked down a flight of twelve steps onto a concrete landing: ”Timmy Oliver, you get her out of this lobby, and from now on, you keep her out of the areas of this hotel where dogs aren’t allowed. Out!” An ornate enamel malamute pinned to Freida’s heaving bosom appeared ready to leap off and, if necessary, enforce her order.
    Having dealt with Oliver, Freida, who looked exhausted, turned to the manager and the bridal party, and spoke calm words of conciliation. Everyone was here to have a good time, Freida said; no one had any interest in spoiling the fun for anyone else. Freida was a tactful politician as well as a superb organizer. She left unspoken the countercharge that their noisy, smelly wedding was going to ruin our lovely dog show.
     

 
     
    AT QUARTER OF SEVEN that evening, Betty Burley and I waited nervously for the start of our Showcase of Rescue Dogs. I’d written the script that would be read as our ten dogs were paraded around the ring, spotlighted, and presented with the same awards— white sashes—that would later go to the stars of the breed. The script was supposed to be sappy enough to bring tears to people’s eyes but not mawkish enough to bring their dinners back up to their mouths—and let me admit that even for a professional writer, attaining that precise degree of melodrama is far from easy. The ring was festooned with tiny white lights, and in the center was a white trellis that looked as if it belonged in a rose garden, but was surrounded by pots of yellow chrysanthemums. The lights and flowers were for the show-dog event to follow, not for our little showcase.
    ”Elsa Van Dine, poor thing,” Betty informed me, ”sent Freida an extremely generous donation specifically for flowers. Little did Elsa ever imagine...!”
    ”That she’d be sending them to her own funeral,” I finished.
    ”That’s a bit of an overstatement, Holly,” Betty replied. ”This is hardly Elsa’s funeral.” As if reconsidering the entire matter of Elsa and her generosity, she added, ”And, of course, Elsa did not send us so much as a halfpenny or whatever it is they use over there now.” Fifteen or twenty years earlier, I’d learned, the late Elsa Van Dine had married an English marquis, moved to Great Britain, and dropped out of dogs. Betty, Duke, and her other old friends, however, hadn’t seen her since she moved abroad and continued to use the name they’d known her by.
    ”And Elsa was a very wealthy woman in her own right,” Betty said, adding rather spitefully, ”for all the good it did her. In fact, I can’t help wondering whether Elsa hadn’t gone and rented some sort of flashy convertible, or whether she might have been wearing a mink coat or something else that attracted this mugger.” She sighed. ” ’Massive head injuries.’ That’s what Freida told me. Elsa would have hated that. She was a pretty girl. Very vain. Oh, well, at least it must have been over quickly.”
    ”Betty,” I whispered, ”there’s Sherri Ann Printz over there. This would be a good time to go and say a quick thanks for the lamp.”
    Sherri Ann was near the gate to the ring. She stood in a group that included our chair, Freida Reilly, who was about to walk in and take her place in the