This Dog for Hire

previous year, I found the listing of when Magritte was first used at stud. It appeared that Morgan Gilmore had been using Magritte at stud and stealing the fees for a little better than two years. With a bitch, that wouldn’t mean much. But in the case of a dog, whose work didn’t take much time at all, even less when his sperm was banked, it could mean a lot of puppies sired and a lot of money paid in stud fees.
    When I had finished with the studbook registers, I opened my bag to put in the notes I had taken and took out the papers Robert Sabotini had given me. The forms to fill out for each patient were fairly predictable, mostly things to check off such as: patient was up and about, patient remained in bed, patient responded to dog, patient did not respond to dog. There was a small space for any comment I wanted to make, and supposedly these notes and comments would be used by Sabotini and the staff to make the patients I visited more comfortable or happier. In some places that was so. In others, the forms got filed unread. But either way, on some visits Dash might make the patients forget about their illness for a few minutes: on others he might help them talk about it, if that’s what they needed to do. I was sure at least two of them were already looking forward to his next visit.
    I put the pages one behind the other as I looked them over until I got to the list of patients Sabotini wanted me to see. There were only six names on the list, those, it seemed from my visit today, who were responding least to other stimuli. He was sending us to the most depressed patients at the hospice, even though the place was small enough for me to visit everyone. Ronald’s name was not on the list, but I was sure he’d want to escort me again. John’s name was given as John W. Doe. Very original, they gave him a middle initial. Perhaps they kept track of their John Does by coding them alphabetically, the way busy dog breeders code their litters, never mixing the Ivy, Iris, and Irving puppies with the Jack, Jake, and Jessica ones. That theory would make John the twenty-third John Doe, unless it was the second or third time around the alphabet.
    Of the other five patients on Sabotini’s list, only one was female, Sivonia LeBlanc. I hadn’t met her yet. I wondered which of these names, if any, were real, if any of these people even remembered the names they had been given when they were young, healthy, and had homes of their own.
    Sivonia LeBlanc. Yeah. Yeah.
    I checked my watch. If I moved fast, I could be at the Garden by two, in plenty of time to ogle my favorite breeds. Then, after most of the dogs had been judged, the handlers would be available for-dishing, rumormongering, and the purveying of vicious gossip. For this case, the world of purebred dogs might turn out to be just what the doctor-ordered!

19
    I Never Knew It Could Be Like This

    IT HIT ME as soon as I entered, even before I showed my ticket to the uniformed guardians of the gates to dog-person heaven, hit the way the flu does, gradually, but all at once too. In no time I was trembling, sweating, anxious, no longer in control, my legs like overcooked spaghetti. I could hardly navigate, but the crowd moved me along, swept me into the tunnel under the stands, on toward the benching area, my pulse rapid, my temperature rising like smoke on a clear day, until I felt like screaming, screaming out until I had lost my voice, yes, yes, yes, I never knew it could be like this.
    Westminster! It's better than sex. And the way my life’s been, more frequent too.
    I took the escalator up a tier above the floor where the rings were, an old habit from my training days. I always liked to start out high up in the cheap seats, watching the rings from above. It was an interesting perspective on movement and gave one an overall look at all the rings at once. Amazingly, considering how vast the crowd was, I could usually spot my old friends, even from that lofty, distant perch. It wasn’t difficult. Captain Haggerty towered head and shoulders above the crowd, his head shaved bald. And the other person I wanted to see was also head and shoulders above the crowd. In his own way.
    I looked down at the rings, both in them and around them. Inside the rings, the breeds were being judged, the judge assessing the dogs to see which of each breed came closest to that breed’s standard, to see which the nearly perfect Platonic pointer, puli, or poodle was. They looked at the dogs