Stud Rites

dainty corsage of white baby’s breath and bruised pink rosebuds. The pewter malamute pin was now upside down. In a voice hoarse with overtried patience, she declared, ”Sherri Ann, you know as well as I do that a good six months ago you told me all about that lamp, in detail, and when you did, you asked whether I would like it for our auction, and I said yes, we certainly would.”
    Administering an unwarranted leash correction to the innocent Amber Waves, Sherri Ann fiercely defended herself: ”I very well may have happened to mention my lamp to you in passing, Freida, but I definitely did not offer it to you. In fact, I remember perfectly that at that point, I was thinking of keeping it for myself.”
    As if responding to some inaudible, invisible cue, Sherri Ann and Freida turned in unison to Betty Burley, who stared silently back at both of them.
    ”And furthermore, Freida,” Sherri Ann continued loudly, ”when I donated it to Betty to help save her poor rescue dogs, I did not do it behind your back, and-”
    ”You damned well did!”
    ”No, I did not! I made no secret of it. I did it right over here at Betty’s nice little booth, yesterday, right out in the open. Ask anyone! And it has been sitting there, on display, at Betty’s booth ever since then, as you’d know if you’d even so much as gone out of your way to stroll by there!” Anticlimactically, Sherri Ann added, ”Which you obviously have not.” Turning to Betty, Sherri Ann demanded to know whether Freida had even once visited the rescue booth.
    Taking a tiny step backward, Betty replied that she had no idea.
    Freida’s eyes narrowed. She nervously fingered one of the pewter puppy earrings. ”Well, Betty,” she began in a voice like permafrost, ”is this the thanks I get for all the support I’ve offered you? I gave you that booth space, and I slaved over the schedule to squeeze in your showcase on the evening that you wanted it. I gave you every single thing you asked for! And this is what I get?”
    I thought: Neither you, Freida, nor you, Betty, gets a litter of puppies sired by Sherri Ann’s Bear. And that’s why you’re both so mightily put out with Sherri Ann.
    Betty’s lips twitched. ”Why, Freida,” she replied, her voice oozing dignity and graciousness, ”I am absolutely astonished to discover that I have been operating on what is clearly a set of erroneous assumptions. I am particularly amazed to hear that the booth and the showcase are somehow my own personal property! Until this moment, I have assumed that the visible presence of rescue at this national was just as important to everyone else who cares about this breed as it was to me.” She finished with the trace of a naughty little smile.
    Freida really had been cooperative about the booth and the showcase. She couldn’t afford to be otherwise, Betty had maintained. No one running for the board of our national breed club could risk a reputation for opposing rescue.
    ”I am one hundred percent pro-rescue!” Freida snapped. Her pewter dogs danced. ”But you know as well as I do—”
    Shrugging her tiny shoulders and addressing a heaven evidently populated by rescued malamutes, Betty bulldozed on. ”Money!” she exclaimed, as if she’d just now discovered the invention of currency. ”Is that what this is about? About failing to meet the basic survival needs of the rescue dogs because some people are afraid that it will be money taken away from trophy funds, and they’ll have to go home without a lot of knickknacks and bric-a-brac and gewgaws that supposedly prove—”
    Heresy! And hypocrisy. The glass-fronted china cabinets in Betty Burley’s dining room were jammed with loot her dogs had won. I must admit, though, that I understood Betty’s attitude perfectly. The costly show trophies presented to other people’s dogs might well be junk, but by virtue of being won by one of my own dogs, even the most trifling bauble always became an inestimably precious icon.
    Freida’s face had turned an alarming red. ”Betty, you are getting carried—”
    ”Carried away?” demanded Betty. ”Well, if I get picked up and carried away, it’ll be the first help of any kind that anyone doing rescue has ever received from a lot of the breeders here!”
    An unfamiliar male voice mumbled in an undertone. Peering over my shoulder, I witnessed an historic moment: Victor Printz was uttering comprehensible words to a fellow human being. ”... more of Betty’s Christ