Stud Rites

the sturdy chains of dogs.
    ”Well, I’ll tell you something.” Pam gestured toward Lois’s dog. ”Doris likes him. He’s just her type.”
    Tiny narrowed her eyes. ”With that tail?”
    ”You watch and see,” Pam told her. ”Some of Lois’s dogs go back to Doris’s, you know. Or maybe you’ve forgotten.”
    Tiny, twenty or thirty years older than Pam, exclaimed, ” Forgotten ? What makes you think that I’m getting forgetful all of a sudden? And in case you’re forgetting something you don’t know to begin with, let me tell you that James Hunnewell’s not going to like that dog any better than Doris does. Among other things, Hunnewell never put up a black-and-white dog in his life, and he’s not going to start now.”
    My hopes rose. Rowdy and Kimi are not black and white, but dark wolf gray.
    After a pause, Pam added, ”Although I, for one, have yet to see any real proof that the man is still alive.”
    ”Don’t be ridiculous!” Tiny said. ”Hunnewell’s name was on the eligible list, wasn’t it?”
    Each of the various competitions, including the independent area specialty scheduled for Sunday (another all-malamute show entirely separate from the national), had a judge. The judge of the national specialty itself, however, was James Hunnewell, whose victory in the poll of our entire national breed club membership had come as a gigantic surprise for the simple reason that he’d been out of dogs for so long that everyone had assumed he was dead. No one I’d talked to had admitted to voting for Hunnewell in the judging poll. Everyone in New England blamed the result on people in other areas of the country, where, I suspect, everyone was blaming us. In strict confidence, the woman who’d tallied the vote had told me that she’d been so amazed at the result that she’d recounted the ballots three separate times before reaching the conclusion that we had elected a deceased judge. Imagine: In the next U.S. presidential race, the surprise victor turns out to be Calvin Coolidge. Astounded, are you? None too delighted? Thought he was dead? Well, there you have the election of James Hunnewell.
    ”I still can’t understand it,” Pam said.
    ”Splintered vote,” I volunteered. ”Or name recognition. That’s what Janet Switzer thinks. Hunnewell’s name is in all the breed books.”
    Janet is Rowdy’s breeder and one of my mentors. ”And if they’d known Hunnewell,” she’d continued, ’they’d have scooped up the little piece of fecal matter and deposited him in the Doggie Dooley where he belongs.”
    James Hunnewell had drawn a surprisingly large entry: Since no one had even seen him for a long time, few exhibitors harbored resentments about losses under him or had any memories at all about how he’d conducted himself in his ring. Janet had advised me to enter. ”The old coot’s got to be on his last legs,” remarked Janet, who isn’t on her own first. ”Who knows? He might kick the bucket any day, and you could luck out with a substitute judge.”
    Faith Barlow, Rowdy’s handler, had taken Hunnewell’s election as a personal challenge. ”There’s not a judge on earth that can intimidate me,” she’d bragged. ”There are a few I won’t show under on principle, but otherwise, if it stands in the ring and hands out ribbons, I’ll show under it; and if it growls at me, I’ll growl back.”
    Betty Burley, though, had angrily refused to enter under James Hunnewell and had urged me to do the same. Betty’s attitude, I thought, must date to some ancient injury or insult, a nasty remark that Hunnewell had made twenty or thirty years ago, an unkind word about her dogs, perhaps, or a mean-spirited comment about Betty’s early rescue efforts.
    I ignored Betty’s advice and entered both dogs. Kimi was just beginning her career in conformation. I entered her in Open bitches. She’d be handled by my cousin Leah. I entered Rowdy, my champion, in Best of Breed. He’d be handled by Faith Barlow. Neither of my dogs would be in the ring until Saturday. Consequently, I had all day tomorrow to observe how Judge James Hunnewell treated those who’d complimented him by paying entry fees for his opinion of their dogs. If I didn’t want my teenage cousin in his ring, I could pull Kimi or, over Leah’s protests, no doubt, find another handler. Faith could take care of herself. I took her at more than her word: If Hunnewell bit her, she’d bite back.
     

 
     
    ACCORDING TO MYTH, the