Stud Rites

shows Leah and Kimi. But I have leaped ahead of myself. The tape has been heavily edited; long minutes have become seconds. And because the camera rested on a very low tripod, the viewpoint is odd and unfamiliar, as if the judging had been filmed by a very small child with a precocious interest in canine gait. Or perhaps an obsession with the lower halves of female human beings. In this foreshadowing of a radical-feminist future, the judge is female, and women handlers outnumber the men... five to one? Ten to one? So maybe what truly enthralls the child is ladies’ legs. They vary so greatly in size and shape, bone and muscle mass, as to constitute a sort of all-breed show within this otherwise uniformly malamute ring.
    Judge Mikki Muldoon’s legs are fine-boned, and she toes out; judged by the official standard of the Alaskan malamute, she doesn’t make it in her own ring. Kimi does. She moves with the power of a thundercloud and the grace of a big cat. At the time, I was silent. Each time I watch the tape, however, I coach Leah aloud: Don’t yank her in! Don’t make her sidewind! Leah’s lesson-ridden childhood pays off: Eurythmics, Suzuki, and the Orff-Kodaly method have taught her tempo and discipline. And if Kimi’s ear set is not the utter perfection of Rowdy’s? Well, malamutes don’t pull with their ears; and to some extent—fourth place, to be exact—Judge Mikki Muldoon agrees. First goes to a bitch bred, owned, and handled by Sherri Ann Printz. Two others are also ahead of Kimi. But fourth? Out of the highly competitive Open class? At a national specialty? With a young, if gifted, handler? I think that’s damn good.
    The hoots and wild applause were for Sherri Ann. My own cries of utter surprise were for Kimi and Leah. For obvious reasons, I did my best to hide the full extent of my astonishment from Leah and Faith. If Kimi knew, she didn’t care. Dogs judge souls, not bodies. Kimi knows her own worth.
    Leah thanked the judge, congratulated those who’d placed ahead of her, and accepted congratulations in return. Sherri Ann Printz smiled, chatted, and gesticulated with great animation. Sherri Ann could, of course, afford magnanimity. Her object, however, was obvious: to present herself to Leah as grandly rising above the false accusations and infantile food-fighting of madwomen. Every vote counts, I thought cynically: Leah belonged to our national breed club.
    Even after leaving the ring, Kimi was still flashing her eyes, wagging her tail at everyone, and angling for liver. To spare Leah the need to keep an eye on Kimi, as well as to reclaim my own dog, I took Kimi’s lead and was scratching her head and otherwise fooling around with her when Sherri Ann Printz turned from Leah to me and, just before leading her bitch back into the ring, exclaimed loudly, ”These youngsters are the future, you know! And if this young lady is any example, it’s my opinion that it’s a very rosy one!”
    I wasn’t sure whether Sherri Ann meant Leah or Kimi, and not long thereafter, when Judge Mikki Muldoon again gave the nod to Sherri Ann—Winners Bitch —I couldn’t help wondering whether the rosy future paramount in Sherri Ann’s mind was hours rather than decades away: In picking a Pawprintz bitch, Mrs. Muldoon hadn’t exactly dashed Sherri Ann’s hopes for Bear’s victory in Best of Breed, a triumph that would also serve as dandy revenge on the cake-smearing Freida Reilly. On the other hand (the frosting-free hand? sorry, no pun intended), if Mikki Muldoon was playing politics, this win and the championship points that went with it could be a sop, an advance consolation prize to Sherri Ann, who, as a VIP in the breed, would be a bad enemy for a judge interested in obtaining future assignments. How political Mikki Muldoon was, I didn’t know. Her pleasure in judging was obvious: She radiated dignified elation. Her efficiency, too, was apparent: When she left the ring for a hard-earned one-hour lunch break, I checked my watch: ten past twelve. In a world in which schedules are usually optimistic approximations, she had completed her morning’s work almost precisely on time, and she’d done it without creating any sense of rushed or careless judging. Striding confidently out of her ring, Judge Mikki Muldoon seemed an altogether different person from the woman who’d occupied the ladies’ room stall next to mine yesterday morning, the nerve-wracked Mikki Muldoon who’d noisily lost her