Stud Rites

Printz and James Hunnewell. Could Betty have approached Hunnewell last night? Betty didn’t have a dog entered. Nothing in the AKC regulations would have barred her from knocking on his door; and she’d been in the corridors before and after she’d retrieved the lamp from the booth.
    My anger came back. If Betty had to be so judgmental, she should’ve become a judge! And before judging me, she should’ve heard my side! I hadn’t touched her tote bag. And I’d kept my mouth shut about the damned Comet lamp.
    Betty could be as ruthless as Kimi, as high-handed as my mother, and as judgmental as God on the Day of Wrath, all at the same time. And that awful lamp meant a great deal to Betty: Cubby, a puppy-mill dog, was descended from a Pawprintz dog, a dog sired by the famed Northpole’s Comet. James Hunnewell had owned Comet. The lamp bore Comet’s fur. As a weapon in Betty’s hands, had the lamp symbolized vengeance for the descent of Comet’s glorious genes into the puppy mills, for the suffering of all dogs doomed to lead miserable lives as puppy-mill breeding stock, and for the heartless elitism of breeders and judges who cared only for quality dogs and denied responsibility for so-called trash? And those voices in the dark parking lot? The voices that jeered at ”Betty’s mongrels” and ”trash dogs”? That parking lot was not far from James Hunnewell’s room. Judges, as I’ve said, need not imprison themselves. Catching the cruel words, Jeanine had worried that Betty, too, might have overheard. Jeanine and Arlette had not recognized the voices. Betty might well have known James Hunnewell’s. Jeanine, who loved Cubby, had been wounded. It had not occurred to Jeanine to strike back.
    Betty was a tiny woman, and the lamp was heavy, but Hunnewell was small, a diminished man, and Betty had the strength of a lifetime spent handling great big dogs. Like everyone else with years of experience in rescue, Betty had had to euthanize dogs that were a menace to children, dogs that had savaged people, malamutes that were a danger to everyone and a threat to the breed’s good name. Euthanize: destroy, put to sleep, put down, give the needle. Take to the vet. But last night in the parking lot there hadn’t been a vet handy, had there? And she could hardly have rushed James Hunnewell to the nearest animal hospital. If Betty had decided to destroy him, she’d have had to do it herself.
     

 
     
    STACKED in a human show pose—feet frozen, head high—Sherri Ann Printz had the black-and-white Amber Waves at her gold lame side. In six months, I predicted, the puppy bitch would be chunky and unrefined. Sherri Ann, of course, had already ripened to beefy coarseness. Amber Waves, however, was behaving like a perfect, if far from little, lady. Sherri Ann, in contrast, was engaged in an ill-bred shouting match with Freida Reilly.
    ”Everyone knew I gave that lamp to Betty!” Sherri Ann screeched. ”And I never, ever, not once promised it to you, Freida Reilly, and you damn well know it!”
    Freida’s early-morning lacquer had developed cracks. It was now four or so in the afternoon. The judging was over for the day. In the ring, the hands-on portion of the judges’ education seminar had just started. The participants consisted of six or eight demonstration dogs and the usual dog-world combination of many women and few men. It won’t always be this way, you know. Modern science, I am happy to report, is already at work on a solution to the scarcity of men in the dog fancy. In the future, we’ll collect, extend, and chill them so they can be conveniently and inexpensively shipped all over the country to be warmed up as needed, just like sperm. As it is now, our human studs are hopelessly overbooked.
    The group surrounding Freida Reilly and Sherri Ann Printz at the national breed club’s booth, however, showed the underrepresentation of men that we temporarily endure. In addition to Freida, Sherri Ann, and Betty Burley, there were four or five other women. Victor Printz lingered at the edge, as did Tim Oliver. Taking yet another covetous look at the old sign from the Chinook Kennels and poking through a stack of collector’s item issues of the Malamute Quarterly, I wasn’t really part of the crowd.
    But back to Freida. Her badge was askew. Her short, tight perm was crushed on one side. The other side puffed out. Her head looked coyly tilted at an uncomfortable angle. Hanging upside down from her lapel was a