The Wicked Flea (18 page)

Chapter 22

Winter, Holly

Yet more perseveration on the topic of these horrific symbols of phallic aggression! Pt. strongly resists interpretation as such—exhibits NO capacity for insight! Proposed bringing the brutes w/ her to my office to prove how “gentle” they are. I put a quick stop to that bid at acting out!

Chapter 23

Subj: Re: Your Rowdy

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

----------------------------

Hi Cindy,

I'm relieved to report that Janet approves. (Janet does not co-own Rowdy, but she's very possessive about him—and about every other dog she's ever bred.) I sent her Emma's pedigree and photos. As I think I told you. Rowdy was bred twice to her Vanessa, but Vanessa resorbed
³
both litters. After that, Vanessa got pyo
⁴
and had to be spayed. Anyway, I can never predict how Janet is going to react to anything, but she is actually enthusiastic. We had only one slight misunderstanding. I told Janet that you were looking for a perfect tail set, and she initially decided that you were casting aspersions on her lines, but when I managed to get a word in,

I straightened her out by saying that Rowdy's perfect tail set was one of the reasons you WANTED to use him.

Janet saw your Howie when he took a four-point major
⁵
under C. J. Pastern. Janet says that he was stark naked—Howie, not Pastern! Maybe I'd better start that one again. Janet says that Howie was totally out of coat and none the worse for it, and that C. J. commented on Howie's excellent structure and movement.

I cannot begin to tell you how much I'd love a Rowdy-Emma puppy, but it's impossible for me to have a third dog here. I guess I'd better just take the stud fee. I'll send you a copy of my contract.

Holly

Chapter 24

As you may have forgotten, but as Wilson certainly had not, the estimable Mrs. Nigel Waggenhoffer was a friend of my late mother’s. At the risk of engaging in the ceaseless, shameless, repetitive bragging to which dog people are prone, let me simply report that my mother was well known and highly regarded in the dog fancy by virtue of her achievements as a breeder and exhibitor of numerous golden retrievers still remembered for their many successes in the conformation and obedience rings, as well as for their outstanding temperaments. Dedicated show person that she was, my mother, Marissa, belonged to various allbreed kennel clubs, golden retriever clubs, and obedience clubs, as well as to the Dog Writers Association of America and other dog organizations. In brief, Marissa was a power in purebred pooches, as is her friend Mrs. Waggenhoffer, a fellow breeder of goldens and the president of the club giving the show I was attending this Saturday, which, I remind you, was the show at which Wilson had entered his Pembroke Welsh corgi bitch, Llio. Although the Micmac Kennel Club was quite prestigious—you may recall that I belonged and Wilson didn’t—the club’s late autumn show was always held in what I deemed a somewhat unpleasant trade center in an industrially blighted community about an hour’s drive from Cambridge. The trade center, which happened to be owned by a nephew of Mrs. Waggenhoffer’s, was too old and shabby to attract important computer conferences, software job fairs, and executive training seminars featuring the kinds of motivational speakers who’d overcome challenges such as the loss of all four limbs and had gone on to win gold medals in Olympic events and, as if the medals weren’t enough, had then gotten stinking rich making inspirational speeches and selling motivation-rousing tapes and CDs:
How I Did the Impossible and You Can, Too!
I buy these tapes. I need them. If you showed Alaskan malamutes in advanced obedience, you’d be in the same pitiable position I am, willing to spend any amount for the motivation instilled by anyone who promises you that optimism is everything and reality counts for nought.

Anyway, the Micmac show was strictly conformation, breed only, no obedience, and as I’ve already mentioned, the malamute judge was Sam Usher, who, I might add, had obviously lost the contents of his cranium, including the optic nerve and the power of rational thought, and had nonetheless gone on to get himself licensed to evaluate dogs when he should have pursued a career making motivational speeches. As I pulled the Bronco into the parking lot of the trade center at ten o’clock on Saturday morning and cruised around in search of an empty spot, I saw only one malamute-familiar vehicle, a beige van owned by a couple who also have Shiba Inus and were probably showing their Shibas today and not their malamutes. Like a lot of the other vans, minivans, cars, and motor homes in the lot, this one was plastered with breed-proud bumper stickers and warnings against tailgating. Paintings of purebred dogs adorned the sides of vehicles and the covers of rear-mounted spare tires, and here and there, exhibitors walked the real thing—show dogs of every size, color, and coat, giant, toy, red, white, black, brindle, smooth-coated, rough-coated, and even almost-no-coated hairless breeds like the Chinese crested, dogs all, great and small, bright and beautiful.

Oh my. With one exception. The oversized male golden retriever caught my eye, not only because goldens always catch my eye, but because every once in a while, a misinformed owner turns up in the show ring with an embarrassingly pet-quality dog. This poor dog sure was one. Finding an empty slot, I turned in, killed the engine, and studied the unfortunate animal, who had the same combination of a grotesquely overdeveloped front and a pitifully weak rear I’d noticed the second I’d seen Zsa Zsa. This dog, however, was tall and rangy, and in contrast to Zsa Zsa, he’d been kept lean. Still, he was horribly unsound and, in terms of the AKC standard, horribly incorrect, with a narrow skull, long ears, and a few dozen other serious faults. But his height was a disqualifying fault, that is, a mortal as opposed to merely venial fault, one that renders a dog ineligible for competition. A male golden is supposed to measure twenty-three to twenty-four inches at the withers. (Remember the withers? On the back, above the front legs.) The standard for the breed gives a bit of leeway, one inch in either direction, but this dog was at least twenty-seven inches. In terms of breed competition, he might as well have had no tail or three heads. If his owners tried to show him, they’d experience anything from mild humiliation to profound mortification.

As my thoughts turned to the owners, I finally took a good look at the people who accompanied the dog,-and was astonished to realize that although I hadn’t actually seen the dog before, I’d seen his picture in the newspaper. The article about the Trask family? The people suing S & I’s for supposedly serving them filth in an order of fries? Yes, the very same rotten schemers who’d practically gone out of their way to feed the dirty, disgusting caudal appendage of a loathsome rodent to
my
beautiful Kimi! What on earth were they doing at a dog show?

The weather, I might mention, was, for once, seasonably cold. The temperature must have been in the high twenties, and the gray sky seemed to reflect the dull blackness of the asphalt. The little Trask girls, Diana and Fergie, wore matching pink polyester coats, probably bought for Easter Sunday. Neither child wore a hat or mittens. I got out of the car and headed toward the family, who, by unhappy coincidence, stood next to two open dumpsters overflowing with trash. Crows or roving animals had torn open the big green plastic bags that were piled next to the dumpsters. Litter blew around the Trasks and their dog, as if twisting their name in order to make a cruel judgment. In unintended protest, the dog was lifting his leg on one of the trash bags. As he lowered the leg, I approached the family. The older man, the one I guessed to be the grandfather, had been missing from the newspaper photo, but he was here today, and his face had the same alert expression I’d noticed before. The parents, Timothy and Brianna, had the washed-out, worn-out look I remembered. When the little girls smiled at me, there was no indication that they’d finally visited a dentist. I felt terrible. Rowdy and Kimi had strong white teeth, in part because our grooming sessions included dental care; I routinely scaled their teeth. If the dogs hadn’t cooperated, I’d have had their teeth professionally cleaned. And here were these little children with their teeth— their baby teeth!—rotting out of their heads! The sight melted my rage. Besides sparing the children my anger, there was almost nothing I could do to make life easier for them. Almost. There was one small thing. If the Trasks intended to show this awful-looking dog today, I could try to save the little girls the pain of listening to strangers disparage their pet.

“I’m Holly Winter,” I said, directing my words mainly at the grandfather. “My dog stole your lunch. I’m really sorry. I should’ve been paying attention.”

The three adults were much more forgiving now than they’d been at S & I’s. Probably because I hadn’t just foiled a plan to establish the grounds for a lawsuit, they were, in fact, friendly and pleasant. They even went so far as to introduce themselves.

“Tim Trask,” said the father. “Brianna, my wife. And my father, George. Fergie and Diana.” He pointed at the girls. Fergie was the taller of the two.

“And Charlie,” little Diana piped up. “Charlie’s our dog!” She wrapped her arms around his neck.

“And
Charlie!” I replied. “I’ll bet Charlie is a really good dog.”

Fergie responded. “Charlie is the best dog in the whole world!”

The three adults exchanged sad-faced glances. Addressing the children, I asked, “And how come Charlie is at the dog show today?”

The children’s exclamations had aroused my hopes. American Kennel Club shows sometimes include Canine Good Citizen testing, for which Charlie would be eligible. The CGC program is open to all dogs, including mixed-breed dogs and purebreds with disqualifying faults.

Fergie answered my question. “I told you! Because Charlie is the best dog in the world!”

“Have you entered him?” I asked Tim Trask. “You’re showing him today?”

The response was immediate and vehement. “Put him in a dog show? He can hardly walk! You ever heard of what they call hip dysplasia?” Tim demanded. In a sympathetic tone, I said, “All too often.”

“You know what it costs to fix?”

“I know what a full hip replacement costs.”

For the price of having both hips replaced, you could buy a new car instead of new hip joints for your dog. The car would be used, and it wouldn’t be a two-year-old Mercedes. But this family couldn’t’ve come up with the money for a new bicycle.

I asked, “It’s severe dysplasia? Is Charlie in pain?” Brianna answered. “If you touch Charlie on the rear, he yelps. The kids are good about it. They’re real gentle with him. We give him aspirin, but it doesn’t do much, and there’s this other medicine we tried, but it didn’t do too much, either, and you could feed your family on what it cost. The vet did an X-ray, and he said the medicine was a waste of money. He said to get the operation or—”

Her husband interrupted her. “Brianna, shut up! We’re not doing that, and for Christ’s sake, not in front of the kids!”

Euthanasia.

“There’s another kind of surgery,” I said. “Your vet probably mentioned—”

Sensibly, Tim Trask glared at me. As I should’ve kept in mind, this wasn’t the first time these people had discussed the dog’s ailment. Tim’s expression said that the dozens of questions that came to me had already been asked and answered.

The elder Mr. Trask, George, spoke up. “For all practical purposes, the dog’s got no hip sockets. The hip joints are deformed, both sides.”

“Any chance of talking to Charlie’s breeder about it?” I asked, half expecting to hear they’d bought the dog at a pet shop.

But in a sweet, high-pitched voice, little Diana said, “The lady died.”

“Every once in a while, people get what they deserve,” Brianna said.

George Trask told me what I already knew. “Breeders are supposed to take X-rays of their dogs before they breed them so’s this doesn’t happen.”

“That’s not foolproof,” I said.

“I know it’s not!” George hollered. “Hey, I could pass a vet school test on hip dysplasia! I read up at the library, including on the Internet. And you wanna know what’s not there? What’s not there is why the hell they let people get away with not doing a damn thing. This dog’s got papers. There’s all kinds of clubs about dogs, you know, fanciers of everything, official this and that, Golden Retriever You Name It, Everything Kennel Club, and did any of them give a shit how people were gonna feel when this happened?” His eyes were wild, and he was beating the cold air with his bare fist.

Sorriness goes only so far. The violence in George Trask’s voice and gestures made me want out. Immediately. “It should never have happened,” I said, careful to agree with him. Not that I disagreed. “I’m really sorry.” Turning to the children, I said, “And I can see what a good dog Charlie is.” Pointedly looking at my watch, I said, “I have to run. I’m late for something.” With an awkward wave of my gloved hand, I headed for the entrance to the trade center.

The lawsuit? The aim wasn’t money for the children. Or not exactly. The little girls loved the dog. The dog was in pain. The choices? Let him live in pain that would inevitably grow worse and worse. Or end his misery by ending his life. Or come up with enough cash to pay for surgery. How? By planting vermin in an order of french fries. I no longer felt angry about Kimi. I understand the love of dogs.