Stud Rites

sit in Finn’s posh booth happily conferring about impaired motility and artificial vaginas. Today, I would do what I always advised newcomers to do at any dog show: I’d keep my eyes and ears open and my mouth locked shut. I would contemplate the ultimate reality: I would look at dogs.
    And, catalog in hand, I did. Right on schedule, Mikki Muldoon had completed her judging of the boys —the males—and started on the girls. Tomorrow morning, she’d begin her day with what was rather ingloriously described as ”Remainder of Bitches.” Flipping through the catalog, I noticed that Freida and her committee had been quite successful in filling it with paid advertising and pages of boosters and tributes. In Pam Ritchie’s ad, a circa 1935 photo of Eva B. Seeley had been cropped and merged with a contemporary picture to present the image of an admiring Mrs. Seeley beaming approval at one of Pam’s bitches. The listings on the pages headed ”Tributes” offered brief, inexpensive homage to assorted collections of people and dogs. Freida Reilly thanked ”Karl Reilly, Ch. Tuffluv’s A Plus,” as if her son and her stud were one and the same. Rowdy, Kimi, Leah, and I paid tribute to Faith Barlow and Janet Switzer, whom I’d scrupulously listed in alphabetical order. Janet’s full-page ad, bordered in black and headed ”In Memoriam,” showed Janet’s great dog, Denali, Rowdy’s sire. I wished that judges were allowed to look at catalogs. The photo of Denali would surely have primed Mikki Muldoon for the sight of his son.
    When I raised my eyes from the catalog, Mrs. Muldoon was pointing one finger—number one, first place in the twelve- to eighteen-month puppy bitch class—to a lovely female of Pam Ritchie’s and a junior handler I recognized as Pam’s nephew. Sherri Ann took second with a black-and-white puppy called Pawprintz Amber Waves. Putting the kid first was, I guess, picking the sentimental favorite, but the crowd was pleased, and Sherri Ann hadn’t come to a national specialty with her ambitions fixed on a puppy bitch. The dog she gave a damn about was Bear, and the prize she craved above all others was the purple-and-gold rosette for Best of Breed.
    I wondered whether James Hunnewell would have put Sherri Ann’s bitch first today and whether he’d have liked Bear as much as Sherri Ann evidently believed. Years earlier, when Sherri Ann had sold that Pawprintz dog to Gladys H. Thacker, had Sherri Ann known that the woman was Hunnewell’s sister? If so, the family connection must have felt like a high recommendation. The brother, James Hunnewell, held a respected position in the dog fancy. It certainly hadn’t occurred to Sherri Ann that his sister operated in the ninth circle of hell: the puppy mills.
    Over and over, television, newspaper, and magazine exposes had documented horrendous filth and disease on puppy farms. I’ll give one example. At a recently raided operation in the Midwest, the puppy miller maintained what she called her ”death barn.” That was where she dumped the bodies of dead dogs and puppies. It was also where she took any dog in desperate need of veterinary care. The sick dogs that entered the death barn didn’t get veterinary care, of course. They got neither food nor water nor euthanasia. They just stayed locked in the barn until they died. Want to hear more? Gee, why not?
    When, if ever, had Sherri Ann found out exactly how James Hunnewell’s sister made her shameful living? Could Sherri Ann have made the discovery only recently? In her position, I thought, wisely or foolishly, fairly or unfairly, I’d have blamed James Hunnewell for his sister’s sins. He should have known, I’d have thought. He should have warned me. He should never have let this happen. Was that how Sherri Ann had felt? Had she taken revenge at the first opportunity?
    And Betty Burley. When Betty received Cubby’s pedigree from me, she’d unquestionably seen that Gladys Thacker was a licensed dealer, which is to say, no amateur dabbler in the commercial puppy trade, but an official operator, a farmer whose produce consisted not of maize, soybeans, eggs, or milk, but of AKC-registered dogs. Betty had been in malamutes for decades. So had Sherri Ann Printz and James Hunnewell. So, in a very different way, had Gladys H. Thacker. Betty might have known that James Hunnewell and Gladys Thacker were brother and sister. If so, it would have been exactly like Betty to confront both Sherri Ann