The Wicked Flea

Ceci was satisfied. “He just loves coming here, don’t you, sweetie? Who is Mommy’s best boy? Is Quest? Is Quest Mommy’s good boy who loves to play with the other doggies?”
    In public! With someone listening ! I cringed at the prospect of Ceci’s introducing me in a similar fashion to Douglas, the man she had in mind for me: Now Dougie, this is Holly-Wolly, and she is Mommy’s best girl, isn’t she? She’s a good girl who just loves to play with the men, aren’t you, Holly? But Douglas wasn’t there; Noah, owner of the four Gospels, was the only man in the group. The three women with him were presented to me only as the mommies of Chomsky, Princess, and Henry David Thoreau. Chomsky was a soft-coated wheaten terrier, a male in desperate need of grooming. That’s the hitch about wheatens. They’re cheerful, perky, friendly, cooperative, charming, medium-size dogs, perfects pets, except that they absolutely, positively need regular brushing, bathing, and trimming, and when I say need, I’m speaking (as usual) from the dog’s point of view. If that soft coat gets filthy and matted the way Chomsky’s was, the dog’s skin becomes irritated and sore. Why do people who hate grooming insist on getting these high-maintenance breeds?
    As is perhaps all too apparent by now, the attitude of dog-show types toward pet people is the attitude that concert pianists take toward enthusiastic amateurs who struggle to pick out “Go Tell Aunt Rhody” on the glockenspiel. Our justification for the insufferable condescension is that they know nothing, we know everything, they’re always wrong, we’re always right, and what’s more, when we try to educate them, are they grateful? No! Gee, I can’t imagine why. For once, I refrained from lecturing. Fortunately, the remaining two dogs were black Labs and thus had short, smooth, easy-care coats. Princess was young, lean, and fit, but poor Henry David Thoreau was grotesquely fat, like a whale with legs, as I did not say aloud.
    As Ceci had said in pointing him out, Noah was a round little man. He had the fuzzy brown hair and the warm, safe appeal of a teddy bear, an image he probably sensed and hated. Even so, his red parka, which matched the red collars on his shepherd-mix dogs, would’ve been suitable for the L. L. Bean toy known as L. L. Bear. Together with the mommies, clad, respectively, in purple, blue, and yellow, Noah extended an enthusiastic greeting to Rowdy and expressed a gratifying interest in him.
    “We used to have a husky here,” said the woman in purple, “but he got run over.”
    The woman in blue corrected her. “This is a mala-mute. Isn’t he?”
    “Yes,” I said.
    “You might want to think about getting him neutered.”
    “He’s a show dog.” I could’ve elaborated by sharing the news that a highly esteemed breeder of malamutes who lived in the state of Washington had just E-mailed me, inquiring about the possibility of using Rowdy at stud. The breeder, Cindy Neely, also happened to be a friend of mine and a fellow soldier in the trenches of malamute rescue. That is, Cindy and I devoted the spare time we didn’t have to finding homes for homeless malamutes. In that case, why breed more mala-mutes? Where else were healthy, correct dogs like hers and mine supposed to come from? But I digress.
    “You can let Rowdy loose,” the woman informed me. “There’s a leash law, sort of, but the dogs always play here, and people turn a blind eye, more or less. Lately, it’s been less, but no one minds this early. Rowdy is beautiful. I’m sure he wins all the time.”
    Pet people! There isn’t a show dog on earth who wins all the time. Still, I intended to thank her and to say something nice about the dogs romping in the field, but before I had a chance, Ceci said, “Holly has two malamutes, a male and a female, the girl is Kimi, and we’ll have to get Holly to bring her here sometime, too, she’s a sweetheart, but the point is that Holly knows everything about dogs, and she’s going to solve all our problems with Zsa Zsa.”
    I do know some things about dogs. For example, I understood that Rowdy was at that moment allowing Quest to sniff his big rear paws only because Quest was an imaginary dog and thus wasn’t there. “What I know is far from everything,” I protested. “But Ceci was telling me about the problem, and she thought it might help to have a fresh perspective.”
    “We were just talking about Zsa Zsa,” Noah said. The