The Wicked Flea

group, she exclaimed cheerfully, “The tart!” Then she bellowed, “Zsa Zsa, here! Damn it! Zsa Zsa!”
    “Probably thinks that Damn It is her name,” Wilson murmured to me. “It’s all Sylvia ever calls her.” Turning toward him, I noticed something to which he seemed oblivious, namely, that Llio, his corgi, was not just squatting close to him, but was soaking his left shoe and the cuff of his left trouser with urine. Averting my gaze, I noticed people glancing at Wilson and Llio, and exchanging low-key smirks and silent snickers.
    “Wilson,” the new arrival said loudly, “that dog is pissing on your foot again. Your pants are soaked.” Poor Wilson looked down at Llio and his left foot. Not everyone felt as sorry for him as I did. Giggles were audible.
    “Thanks, Sylvia,” Wilson said with an edge in his voice. “Llio, bad dog!”
    “Too late now,” someone told him gently.
    “Zsa Zsa!” Sylvia bellowed. “There she is! Zsa Zsa! Get over here before I strangle you!” Sylvia’s tone, however, was affectionate.
    Heading toward the group from the direction of the woods was a morbidly obese golden retriever.
    “Sylvia, you’ve got to get that dog on a diet,” someone said.
    “I tried diet food,” Sylvia replied, “but she didn’t like it. All she wants to do is pig out on burgers and fries.”
    It seemed to me that if Wilson had had any pride, he’d have gone home to change his pants and shoes. But he was still hanging around. Watching his face, I could almost read his mind. His thoughts seemed identical to mine. Then, to my astonishment, he spoke them aloud.
    “Then don’t give them to her,” he said. “If she doesn’t like low-calorie food, she won’t eat it, and she’ll lose weight.”
    “The dog expert speaks!” Sylvia crowed. “At least Zsa Zsa’s housebroken. Llio’s ruined every rug in my house.”
    Meanwhile, Zsa Zsa plodded toward us. To anyone who cared about dogs, she was pitiful. To someone who knew a bit about canine gait (yes, guess who the someone was), it was hard to know where to begin enumerating what was wrong with hers. As she drew close, I could see not only that she was grotesquely overweight, but that the excess pounds were badly distributed. Her shoulders were overdeveloped, and her whole front was monstrously heavy, but her hips and rear legs were scrawny. Her forelegs bowed and her back sagged as if she were carrying a cruelly heavy pack. With her hind legs, she took the mincing little steps of a woman in stiletto heels. In other words, because of weakness in the rear, her front end was doing all the work of dragging her around. When she ran, her rear legs moved under her in unison like a rabbit’s; the gait is known as “bunny hopping.” It’s hard to evaluate structure and movement in a fat dog. Still, Zsa Zsa was the picture of severe hip dysplasia. As Ceci had said, Quest was dysplastic. By comparison with this poor golden, he moved like a dream. And he wasn’t in pain. I’d have bet anything that Zsa Zsa was.
    Empathy blinded me, as did anger. My own hip joints ached. And damn it! That pain was preventable. Where did dysplastic dogs come from? From dysplastic lines, that was where, and if every breeder would X-ray the hips of all breeding stock, the incidence of the disorder would plummet. Why breed Rowdy? So there’d be malamutes with his effortless gait. From the looks of Zsa Zsa, she’d come from a pet shop or a backyard breeder. If buyers would shop as carefully for puppies as they did for cars, then... cars? Hell, if they’d shop as carefully for puppies as they did for beer! Well, then—
    When Zsa Zsa struck, Rowdy was ready. He’s a good dog, but he’s not big on empathy for other animals. Also, he cares nothing about the ethics of dog breeding; if the choice were his, he’d be the sire of thousands. Instead of wasting his time on thinking, Rowdy had watched Zsa Zsa and risen to his feet. He doesn’t believe in taking anything lying down, especially when the thing in question is an attack by another dog.
    Zsa Zsa caught me completely unaware. The silence, suddenness, and power of her attack astounded me. In seconds, Rowdy and Zsa Zsa were one violent mass of writhing bodies and flashing teeth. Then Rowdy locked those massive malamute jaws in a vice grip on the skin of Zsa Zsa’s neck. The air itself reeked of a fight. The crowd of people around us parted to make room for the brawl. Sylvia was shouting at Zsa Zsa, and Ceci was