Stud Rites

Marquis of Denver was considered a mesalliance. The marquis, you see, did not have malamutes. What he had, in addition to a title, a country seat, and a modest fortune, was life-threatening asthma. The marquis’s most virulent attacks had all been triggered by inadvertent contact with dogs. During the rapid kennel dispersion that preceded the moderately young and very beautiful Elsa Van Dine’s immigration to Great Britain, the bride-to-be made a big deal of expressing public concern for her fiancé's ailing lungs. In private, however, she confided her reluctance to subject her dogs to the ordeal of a six-month quarantine. Ah, the transparent foolishness of exchanging a pack of gorgeous show dogs with numerous impressive handles to their names for a man who possessed but one! Thus Elsa Van Dine became the Marchioness of Denver. And Ch. Northpole’s Comet was sold. Elsa Van Dine, I think, made a very bad bargain. The marquis was one peer among many; Comet was without peer.
    The story of Elsa and the marquis I learned from Duke Sylvia while I was hanging around the exhibition hall watching Mikki Muldoon judge what are called Bred-by-Exhibitor bitches, more or less what it sounds like—and nervously awaiting Leah and Kimi’s time in the ring. When I’d last checked, Kimi had been standing on the grooming table wagging her tail and looking really lovely, and Leah had finally changed into the dress that I’d sprung on her at the last minute, together with the threat that if she refused to wear it, I’d withhold permission for her to handle Kimi, who is not co-owned, but officially belongs only to me. The flower-patterned dress fit perfectly, just as it had when Leah had made fun of it in the store. It had big pockets for stashing bait. Furthermore, judges prefer the Little House on the Prairie look to Leah’s usual layers of black on black over black, a style that owes more to Bram Stoker than it does to Laura Ingalls Wilder, and if you had to pick one or the other to handle your bitch, just which one would you go for? Reconciled to the dress, Leah had seemed as happy and confident as Kimi.
    I, of course, was racked by an acute case of vicarious stage fright.
    The enviably calm Duke Sylvia was waiting to handle a big, dark Kotzebue bitch entered in American Bred. The assignment wasn’t exactly what had brought Duke to the national, but I was willing to bet that later in the day, when he waited to show Ironman in Best of Breed, he’d seem as casual and congenial as he did now. ”There was one thing Elsa didn’t count on,” he remarked, filling me in on Elsa Van Dine. ”And that was, when the old guy passed away, she’d get stuck being a dowager.” Smiling rather fondly, he added, ”I’ll bet Elsa didn’t like that one damned bit.”
    ”You handled Comet for her?” Feminist linguists have supposedly cured women of this shrinking-tongued habit of letting driveling questions drip from our lips when we ought to be spitting out bold assertions. I apparently suffer from a polemic-resistant case of the ailment. I knew damn well that Duke had handled Comet for every owner the dog had had. Only an hour or so earlier, as I’d finished my coffee, I’d studied the Malamute Quarterly centerfold about Comet in one of the old issues that I’d taken with me to breakfast.
    Duke nodded.
    For no good reason, so did I. ”And you handled him, uh... when Hadley...”
    I’d heard about the incident dozens of times, but until I’d read the centerfold piece, I hadn’t connected it with Duke or Comet or, for that matter, with Alaskan malamutes. Anyway, J. J. Hadley was Comet’s breeder, and when Comet wasn’t even two years old, Hadley entered him at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, with Duke handling. This was in the old days, of course, back before Westminster was champions only. Anyway, spectacular dog that he was, Comet not only finished his championship at Westminster, but took Best of Breed. And J. J. Hadley died of surprise. Literally. He had a heart attack right outside the ring. Of course, it was a thrill for anyone to finish a dog there, especially a young dog that took the breed, but it is possible to carry this dog thing too far, and it seemed to me that that was just what J. J. Hadley had done. Hadley’s widow, Velma, however, instead of sensibly realizing that breed competition is no sport for the faint of heart, laid the blame on the innocent Comet and on the equally innocent Westminster Kennel