The Dogfather

secrets, but sooner or later I’d still have to get to the matter of my moral compromise. I am deeply ashamed to have had any part in what happened in the ring. I accept full responsibility. I am heartily sorry.
     

CHAPTER 13
     
    That day’s malamute judge, Harry Howland, was the head of a family business that manufactured and distributed the kinds of cardboard containers used for takeout pizza and pastry. Ironically, it’s possible that Harry Howland’s company was the very one that had made the pastry box containing Enzio Guarini’s Kimi-filched cannoli. But for once, these so-called coincidences (dog spelled backward) are irrelevant. What you need to know about Harry Howland is, first, that he was an AKC judge and, second, that he knew my father and had known my late mother, who bred top-winning golden retrievers and was a Power in the Dog Fancy. In case you don’t show dogs, let me briefly explain that the American Kennel Club not only expects its judges to be treated with the utmost in courtesy and respect, but with the goal of seeing these happy expectations fulfilled, publishes disciplinary guidelines that spell out the nasty consequences of displaying rudeness, disrespect, or worse toward an AKC judge. For example, aggravated physical abuse of a judge can get you a fine of $5,000 and the suspension of AKC privileges for ten years. More to the point—the point toward which we are, alas, heading—the offense of attempting to influence a judge carries a standard penalty of a $500 fine and an 18-month suspension of privileges. Suspension of AKC privileges: For the duration, you can’t show a dog or do much else that counts in life, especially in my life. As to Harry Howland’s acquaintance with my parents, Mr. Howland... well, we’re about to get to that.
    But let’s start at the beginning of Harry Howland’s judging of my breed, the Alaskan malamute, which took place as scheduled in Ring 7 and was about to begin only about ten minutes late, which is to say, at about 9:10. Within the sacred precincts of the baby-gated ring, Harry Howland and his stewards were busy with paperwork, and at the judge’s table, a few handlers were still picking up armbands. Harry Howland was a tall, silver-haired man of distinguished appearance who so thoroughly looked the part of an AKC judge that his photograph appeared in educational materials about the judging of dog shows distributed by the AKC. I did not look distinguished. Having failed to find someone else to handle Rowdy for me, I’d not only picked up his armband, but fastened it on my left upper arm over the sleeve of my red blazer, which was actually Leah’s. In a doomed effort to look properly dressed, I’d convinced her that she’d be fine in her white silk blouse and navy-blue pleated skirt and that I needed the blazer more than she did. “You hate red,” I’d pointed out. “You never wear it. You think it looks awful with your hair.”
    “It looks beautiful with her hair,” Mary had said.
    “True,” I’d said. “But Leah doesn’t think so.”
    I'd brushed my hair, applied blush and lipstick, donned the blazer, and reconciled myself to handling Rowdy myself if my ringside efforts to find a handler failed, as they had. As to the armband, maybe I need to note the sportsmanlike fiction that the judge has no idea of the identities of dogs and handlers, each dog being identified only by the number on the handler’s armband and the judge being prohibited from looking at the show catalog, which publishes the names of the dogs together with their corresponding numbers. In reality, even as small worlds go, this one is minuscule. Judges recognize dogs and handlers because they’ve seen them everywhere, in the ring and in ads in dog magazines.
    Now, as Leah, Kimi, Mary, Mr. Wookie, Rowdy, and I stood outside Ring 7 with a lot of other handlers and malamutes, as well as a small crowd of spectators, I said, mainly to myself, “After all, I am an experienced handler. What’s the worst that can happen?”
    Leah said, “You could faint or throw up.”
    "I’m not woozy, and my stomach is okay.”
    Leah continued. “Rowdy could get in a fight, or you could trip and fall on your face.”
    "The two of you!” Mary was misting Mr. Wookie’s coat and fluffing him up here and there with a small pin brush that bore his portrait on the back. Mr. Wookie was voicing a highly inflected opinion. Although his vocalizations sounded strangely like the word no,