The Dogfather

the intelligence and unflappability of my wonderful dogs, but the postexplosion condition of my horrible car. As I was starting to say, even my scant knowledge of automobiles led me to expect that if a Bronco’s engine combusted, the subsequent damage would be worse toward the front of the car. In fact, my Bronco’s hood was intact, but the rear and side windows were shattered, and jagged metal fragments framed a new and large hole in the rusty body behind the doors. Kevin’s reaction now made sense. The engine hadn’t exploded. Yet.
    I quit dawdling and gaping, and instead of ignoring the hurry-up shouts of the cop who had Tracker’s crate, I screamed back at him over the din, and with Rowdy and Kimi leading the way, ran down Appleton Street toward Huron Avenue. Fear drove me, fear inspired less by the sight of my ruined car than by hideous visions of the possibilities. My car hadn’t just exploded; it had been blown up; someone had rigged it to detonate. Deitz? Alternatively, the vaporization of my Bronco could have been a Mob favor. If so, it could easily have become no favor at all. Had the bomb been on a timer? What if there’d been a miscalculation and the explosion had occurred during the previous evening? What if I’d declared the car fit for use and Leah and her friends had loaded the love seat into it instead of into Steve’s van? What if Steve and little Sammy had been standing on the sidewalk next to the car when it exploded?
    Reaching the crowd at the far end of the block, I sank to my knees and wrapped my arms around my dogs. I could feel the strong beat of Rowdy’s heart. The initial boom, the excitement, the lights, the sirens, and the dash down the street simply must have elevated his heart rate. But what I felt through my fingertips was a steady, slow rhythm. Out of curiosity, I felt for Kimi’s heart. Its rate matched Rowdy’s. I let myself sink between the dogs. I like to imagine that I’m half malamute: rugged and brave. Unfortunately, I belong to a lesser breed. Proof: I was frightened and frantic. No matter how long I live with this breed of breeds, I’ll never become even half malamute. I’m incredibly uncool. The Alaskan malamute is ultimately Arctic, too cool for words.
    “You know what, guys?” I said. “If I’d set out to destroy that car and nothing else, I couldn’t have done a better job than this. And that, I think, is exactly what someone did.”
     

CHAPTER 19
     
    Translated into English, the typical dog message takes the form of a single present-tense first-person sentence: I like that, I hate that, I feel sick, I feel stressed, I’m thirsty, I’m rivalrous, I need to go out. As a dog professional, I allow myself the freedom of rich interpretation. In particular, I’m willing to shift the canine present to the future. The change of tense inevitably entails— no pun intended—muddying the plainspoken all-about-me here-and-now of canine sentences with messy human attributions of conditionality and probability. If I reach toward a dog’s neck and he bares his teeth at me, what he means is I’m scared. According to my rich interpretation, he also means, Grab my collar, and I’ll nail you. To avoid getting bitten, I’ll act on my interpretation, but it will remain mine-, all the dog will actually have told me is that he’s desperately frightened.
    As a dog trainer, I’d never claimed expertise in decoding human messages. Now, as dog trainer to the Mob, I had no clear idea how to interpret the cryptic message delivered by whoever had blown up my car. According to Kevin, the culprit was no amateur. Like everyone else in dogs, I know hundreds of professional dog trainers, dog writers, dog photographers, dog artists, pet-food company representatives, veterinarians, vet techs, groomers, and handlers. By comparison, my acquaintanceship in the world of automobile exploders was pitifully small.
    “Not that I want to expand it,” I told Tracker, who wasn’t listening. It was Tuesday morning. I felt better than you might expect, shaken but also relieved: scared about what might happen next, but glad that my horrible car would never again endanger anyone. The dogs felt dandy. The emotional casualty was Tracker, who was in the kitchen huddled over the saucer of canned cat food I’d offered her in the hope of soothing her frayed nerves. The dogs were in the yard so that Tracker could have the run of the house. Instead of displaying a healthy curiosity about her