This Dog for Hire

tri broke, his hand went fishing around in his jacket pocket and, finding nothing there, went into the small leather pouch he had fastened onto his belt only moments earlier in the benching area, the pouch in which he kept his supply of liver treats.
    The judge signaled the handlers to stop. Once again, each knelt on the mat and fussed with his or her dog, stacking, brushing, baiting, trying to get each to show at his best.
    Gil pulled out the small brush that was sticking out of his back pocket and ran it over Magritte’s back. Then he stood and dramatically took a few strokes with the same brush in his own hair, showing oneness with his little charge.
    He stacked Magritte and stood again to face him, a piece of bait held shoulder height in his hand, seizing Magritte’s attention with it, teasing him into leaning forward so that his shoulder assembly would be bent rather than straight, so that he’d be literally and figuratively up on his toes, so that his neck would look graceful, so that he might even look good enough to win. Gil kept smacking his lips to remind the little dog precisely how yummy the treat would taste when he had finally earned it.
    Finally the judge asked each handler in turn to take the dog around once more in the prescribed pattern while the rest of the handlers kept their dogs in line, pretty, stacked, and waiting, some letting them chew on the bait as they held it in their fingers, others moving the bait in a mesmerizing pattern as if to say, See what you’ll get if you do this right.
    Gil was third in line. I watched him look back and forth between the dog-and-handler team moving across the ring and Magritte, making sure his own dog’s attention was still crisp. Gil’s face was shining with perspiration, and I noticed that twice he swapped Magritte’s lead back and forth so that he could wipe his hands on a handkerchief. Finally, it was their turn. I felt something small as a bit of paper flutter and rise in my chest.
    First the judge examined Magritte on the table, feeling his body, making sure there were two testicles, both fully descended into the scrotum, checking his bite, and looking carefully at his quizzical expression. Afterward, he was placed back on the mat and Gil was asked to take him around.
    Gil began gaiting Magritte down the far side of the ring, going quickly at first in a well-practiced lope, his eyes on Magritte as he ran. When he got to the side opposite the judge, he turned, as the two handlers before him had, crossing in front of where Addie and Poppy sat, Magritte trotting beautifully between Gil and the judge.
    With all eyes on him and Magritte, Gil approached the final turn that would have taken him diagonally back toward the judge, whose body language revealed her keen interest. (This, after all, was serious business.)
    Gil never made the turn.
    Instead, face flushed pink, he slowed his pace. And stopped. For no apparent reason, or so it seemed, he lost his balance, going down hard onto his right knee, the knuckles of his right hand bracing him on the floor.
    There was a gasp from the crowd and, almost immediately, the nervous laughter of people grateful that what has happened to someone else hasn’t happened to them.
    We sat waiting for Gil to get up, grin sheepishly, put a crease back in his pants, put a snap into the lead, and continue like a trooper. After all, Morgan Gilmore wasn’t the first handler to slip and fall in the ring. Nor would he be the last.
    But he didn’t stand up.
    He lifted his right hand to his collar and scratched at it, as if he were a dog. It was almost comical, until his left leg skidded sideways and, with all the grace of a forty-pound sack of Eukanuba tipping over, Morgan Gilmore, now the color of skim milk, pitched forward, facedown, onto the mat.

25
Everyone Wants to Win, You See

    THERE WAS AN enormous cry from the crowd, people who had been seated standing up. I felt my catalog slide off my lap and heard it land with a dull thud at my feet.
    Then it was all movement again, not dogs and handlers going around, but the judge, the steward, and a rush of uniformed security guards, all surrounding Gil so densely that in a moment he was no longer visible to the crowd. One of the security guards stood on the outside of the circle, speaking urgently into his walkie-talkie.
    Magritte was outside the circle, too, the end of hi-leash apparently still in Gilmore’s hand, because twice he pulled to get away—basenjis do not take