This Dog for Hire

that excite me, understanding how dogs learn, crack jokes, communicate, even how they pick up the rules of a game and then change them, just as their human opponents can.
    I headed for the benching area, stopping, as I always did, to buy a present for Dashiell, this time a new Flying Man because his old one was falling apart. It always amazed me to see a powerful adult animal playing with a faux-sheepskin gingerbread man with a squeaker in his belly, acting as silly and thrilled to pieces as any three-month-old. Dashiell would never find himself in therapy searching for his inner puppy.
    I checked my catalog to make sure I wasn’t about to bother anyone who was yet to go up and began to schmooze with handlers, first about their breed; then, if things went well, I’d progress to frozen semen and Morgan Gilmore.
    There were two people sitting in the Akita area, and I knew the Akitas had gone up in the morning, so I admired one of the dogs, who was immediately removed from his crate and stacked for me in the crowded aisle. I guess I sounded like a potential puppy buyer and had found an owner. Her companion, a no-nonsense woman in the de rigueur ring outfit—longish A-line skirt, blazer, and thick-soled, clunky oxfords—I suspected was a handler. My suspicion was confirmed when she gave me her card, so that when the Akita puppy I was about to buy from her friend got old enough, she could handle it for me and make it a champion. Hey, if you want people to open up to you, you have to ingratiate yourself with a few appropriate lies.
    As soon as I could, I slipped in my usual fable about a neat little basenji bitch—this time I said she belonged to my sister—and the wonderful deal we were offered. I tried to look as if I had just arrived from a farm in Kansas instead of a lair in Greenwich Village. The women passed a look between them, a combination of pity and alarm.
    “Tell your sister that’s not a good idea,” Irish, the handler, said.
    “Why not?”
    “Well, uh, you should be dealing with the owner?“ Margaret, the Akita breeder said, looking again at Trish.
    “I think like the guy who owns the dog has the handler take care of the breedings. Anyway, he said the dog was banked, you know, like a sperm bank, so—
    “Look,” Trish said, “it sounds fishy. You know what I’m saying?”
    “You mean—”
    “Right.” She looked all around to see who was within earshot. “The guy’s a slime,” she whispered. “Never did anything in an upright way in his life.”
    “Oh,” I said.
    “Trish knows. She sees him at all the shows. I don’t usually travel with Bomber,” Margaret said. “Trish shows for me. But of course, for Westminster, I mean, I wouldn’t miss this for anything.’
    “How’d he do?” I asked.
    " He did fine. The judge prefers another type.”
    “There’s more than one type?” I said. Gee, and here I thought there was only one AKC standard.
    “She likes a finer-boned dog. Bomber is heavy boned.”
    Trish snapped the leash up and took a piece of liver from her pocket, and Bomber snapped to attention. “See?”
    “Heavy boned,” I said. “Well, about the sperm thing. Are you sure? I mean, what sort of stuff were you referring to?” I whispered after looking around, not that I would know who to watch out for.
    Margaret slid over, and I squeezed in next to her.
    “I understand he gets real close with some of the judges,” she said.
    “How close?” I asked.
    “Real close,” Trish said, rubbing her forefinger back and forth along the ball of her thumb.
    I clapped a hand over my mouth to express my astonishment.
    I thanked Trish and Margaret, made a point of carefully putting their cards into my purse, then headed over to see the miniature bull terriers.
    I began to chat with a stocky guy, mid-forties, male pattern balding, flat nose, drive-in pores, small, pale eyes, named Larry Benton, “but my friends call me Speed.” He showed me his dental implants, canines and all, and I hoped, for his sake, those friends weren’t referring to his sexual pacing. At least he was eager to talk.
    “They call him Liver Lips,” he said when I mentioned I was thinking of having Gil handle for me since he was so good with basenjis, “because what he does, see, he holds the liver in his mouth and makes it real juicy. Then he holds it here,” he said, pointing to the middle of his bottom lip, “and then spits it to the dog, see, and the dog catches it. Makes the dog look at his face,