Bloodlines (6 page)

She peeped a response: “No!”

“Okay, well, don’t be surprised if there are. It’s perfectly normal. Look, we’ll be glad to take Missy. She’s lovely.” Missy dropped to the floor, rolled onto her back, and eyed me. I scratched her chest and rubbed her tummy. Enid Sievers probably thought I was mad. “But,” I said, “uh, I can’t take Missy today, and neither can Betty Burley. If it’s okay, I’ll come back for her on Monday, and I’ll drive her out to Betty’s. Is that okay? Can you keep her for the weekend?”

Enid Sievers said that it was no problem at all. Remember that, would you? Remember that. Then I asked whether she had Missy’s papers.

“Those are very important documents, you know,” she informed me. “Edgar said that those were valuable documents. Missy’s papers meant a lot to him.” Her tone became reluctant, stubborn. “I don’t think Edgar would like me to part with them.”

You do any purebred rescue? If so, you’re not surprised, are you? The papers had more sentimental value than the dog did. You’re used to it. I’ve seen people abandon the dog, but insist on keeping the collar and tags. Honest to God. Anyway, if Enid Sievers had been someone other than who she was, I’d have pressed hard for those papers. I’d read about the sale of AKC papers to puppy mills. I’d heard that papers are auctioned off. Blue money, right? AKC papers. But Enid Sievers? Never. If I’d wanted to sell or auction a dog’s papers myself, I wouldn’t have known where to begin. Enid
Sievers certainly wouldn’t, either. Besides, I’d be back on Monday. I could try again. In the meantime, I asked to look at the papers. I said that I was curious about where Missy had come from, who her parents were.

While Enid Sievers was digging the documents out of a drawer somewhere, I sat on the floor of the pantry, dug my fingers into Missy’s coat, stroked her muzzle, and talked softly to her. “You’re perfectly safe and happy here,” I said. “You’re just a little bored and lonely. And I’ll be back for you in three days. And then Betty and I will find a wonderful family for you, and you’ll go on long walks every day. And you won’t have to be alone any more. I promise. I hate to leave you, but I’ll be back. And then everything will be much, much better.” Yeah, I know. Spaying. All purebred rescue dogs are spayed or neutered before they’re placed or immediately afterward. But why worry her with details?

Then Enid Sievers returned, and I gave Missy a big hug, shut her in the pantry, and followed her mistress back to that overstuffed, cloying living room. Enid Sievers hesitated a moment, clutching a manila folder against her bosom as if I might snatch Missy’s papers and take off, but then handed it to me. I took my old place on the love seat, put the folder on the coffee table in front of me, and opened it. I was a little surprised to find that besides the familiar white, violet-lettered AKC registration slip, the folder contained an AKC-certified four-generation pedigree, for which Edgar Sievers had paid fifteen dollars in addition to the registration fee. According to the registration slip and the pedigree, Missy was Princess Melissa Sievers, a wolf gray and white Alaskan malamute female whelped eight months earlier. The breeder’s name was Walter Simms. I’d never heard of him, and neither the registration slip nor the pedigree gave his address. I assumed that he was a Kansas farmer who’d found hogs unprofitable, or maybe chickens. Did you know that in Kansas alone, puppies are a forty-two-million-dollar-a-year business? Yeah, forty-two million. A year. According to something I
read somewhere, there are more dogs in the chicken coops of Kansas than there are chickens. Jesus. My eyes reached the bottom half of the pedigree, the section that showed Missy’s maternal line. The names staggered me.

Enid Sievers must have read my expression. “It’s
very
impressive, isn’t it,” she said. “There are a lot of champion dogs there. The lady at Puppy Luv explained to Edgar that Missy was really a show dog, you know. All of her dogs are.”

Without asking Enid Sievers’s permission, I reached into my purse, pulled out a notebook and pen, and began to scrawl down the names on the pedigree. Those on Missy’s sire’s side sounded like puppy mill names to me: Sir Snowy II, Caesar the Great. But her dam? Ever hear of Icekist? Icekist is the kennel name of Lois Metzler. I knew Lois. I ran into her at shows all the time. Betty Burley knew her, too. Lois Metzler was no chicken farmer in Kansas. She was a reputable malamute breeder, and her kennel was right here in Massachusetts.

Remember that business about spotting one of your infant relatives in the window of a shopping mall baby shop? Remember about taking that feeling and toning it down? Well, in the case of Lois Metzler, forget that. Take that feeling and let it rip until it blasts your chest open. A dog from Lois Metzler’s lines for sale in a pet shop? I would have sworn it was impossible. So, I thought, would Lois. No wonder Missy was decent looking. After all, she came from Lois’s lines.

Sometimes I imagine myself at a meeting held in the pale yellow cinder-block assembly room of a church basement. Rows of brown-painted metal folding chairs face a podium. In these chairs sit men and women with the brave, ravaged faces of recovering addicts. It is my turn to testify. My left hand clutches spasmodically as I grab at a nonexistent leash. I step forward and face the audience.

“My name is Holly,” I say. “And I am a dogaholic.”

What I really need isn’t Dogaholics Anonymous, but Dog Spenders Anonymous, a self-help organization devoted to squelching the compulsion to throw away money on canine paraphernalia. Just put me within spending distance of the concession booths at a dog show, and the urge overwhelms me. How does anyone resist? If your dog does great, well, naturally, you have to celebrate. If he does miserably, you both deserve a little consolation, don’t you? And if you don’t even have a dog entered that day? If you’re stewarding? Or just wandering around? Well, then, you don’t even have a ribbon, never mind a trophy, to take home, do you? After all, this is not just anywhere, is it? This is a dog show. No one leaves empty-handed.

Thus, Sunday afternoon found Rowdy and me studying leashes in the depths of the Cherrybrook booth at the Shawsheen Valley Kennel Club’s annual AKC dog show and obedience trial. The show site was the Northeast Trade Center, which is just off Route 128 in Woburn and not in the Shawsheen Valley, but clubs have a hard time finding places to hold shows, especially indoor shows. Except when transfigured by several thousand gorgeous show dogs, the Northeast Trade Center is an unprepossessing structure that looks like an abandoned single-story, flat-roofed post-World War II factory. As a show site, though, it’s not bad. Dogs are, of course, allowed, and the interior space is open and fairly large. Also, the location is convenient, and the place is easy to find. In fact, if you’ve ever taken Route I-95 through Massachusetts, you’ve passed it, because I-95 is what everyone around here calls 128, America’s Technology Highway. Even if you’re coming from out of state, you can’t miss the site: Just take the Woburn exit, Route 38, turn into the shopping mall, follow the little road that runs parallel to the highway, and you’ll end up in the parking lot.

As I was saying, having once again failed to qualify in Open—yes, once again, the long sit—Rowdy and I were prowling around the Cherrybrook booth in search of consolation. So far, I’d accumulated a beautiful new rolled-leather collar that Rowdy didn’t need, an identical but slightly smaller collar that Kimi didn’t need either, a fourteen-ounce container of Redi-Liver treats (for the unbeatable price of thirteen dollars and thirty cents), a bottle of coat conditioner, and (at a mere eight dollars and seventy-five cents each, less than half the pet shop list price) two large-size Nylafloss dental devices.

I was fingering a handsome bright red leash that hung with hundreds of other leashes in all colors, widths, lengths, and materials, when a tiny, wiry woman with a mobile face and a head of short white curls popped up next to Rowdy like an elf materializing at the side of a tame wolf and said, “Rotten luck!”

Betty usually wears bright-colored warm-up suits that make her look like a heavily wrinkled but exceptionally agile stretch-suit-clad infant. That afternoon, though, Betty was spiffed up for the breed ring: tweed suit, lacy white blouse, patterned black stockings, black flats. You might guess that Betty Burley would own one pampered apricot toy poodle or an adorable little Pomeranian, but as I’ve mentioned, she’s been breeding, showing, and rescuing malamutes for decades.

“Thank you,” I said. “I don’t feel too bad about it. I know he can do it. Right now, it’s mostly a matter of being patient.”

If you know anything about obedience, you’ll realize that since Rowdy was in Open, the obedience class you enter for a C.D.X., Companion Dog Excellent title, he already had his C.D. The obedience ring has always been a struggle for him. He got his C.D. with scores that are nothing to brag about, and, although he loved the jumping and retrieving in Open and was capable of better scores than he’d achieved in Novice, the problem we faced now was qualifying at all. In breed, though, Rowdy is a natural. Anyway, one legacy of Rowdy’s career in conformation is his adoration of breed handlers, all of whom carry liver and other goodies to bait their dogs in the ring and most of whom, Rowdy had discovered, could be coaxed into doling out treats. So at the sight of Betty Burley, he posed himself in a flashy show stance, caught Betty’s eye, slapped a winner’s grin on his face, and wagged his tail hard enough to send the Cherrybrook leashes flying like colorful banners blown by a strong wind. Also, I suspect that Betty reminded him of Kimi.

“This is a good-looking dog,” Betty said. She has the big malamutes—M’Loots—that you see in the Midwest and other parts of the country, not the smaller Kotzebues you see here in New England. Rowdy isn’t pure Kotzebue, and he’s a big boy—standard size—but I was surprised and happy to hear Betty admire him. He didn’t look like Betty’s dogs, and most breeders like the
type they raise themselves. “You better keep your eye on him today,” Betty added as she reached into one of the pockets of her wolf gray suit. When I’d nodded an okay, she fed Rowdy one of those disgusting-looking chunks of dried liver for which dogs will do anything, absolutely anything, even behave themselves. “He’d go with anyone.”

“I know,” I said. “I didn’t even bring a crate. I’m just keeping him with me. Nothing’s happened, has it? I mean, here?”

In case you’ve spent the last few years exiled on some barren no-mail, no-dog-show island, let me explain. The militant wing of the animal rights movement, having evidently decided that love and protection are exploitation, had recently begun to release dogs from their servile state of bondage. In other words, they’d been going to shows and “liberating” dogs from their crates. Sound familiar? Yes, indeed, the American policy in Vietnam: To save the village, you have to destroy it.

Anyway, as I’ve suggested, Betty Burley, who is a tiny woman in her midseventies or so, looks almost nothing like a malamute, but when she answered my question about the animal rights extremists, her rather almond-shaped brown eyes blazed exactly the way Rowdy’s do whenever he spots that cocker spaniel that’s kept on a clothesline trolley a few blocks from my house. “Nothing’s happened yet,” said Betty, fingering a gray show lead, “but they’ve been turning up at a whole lot of shows. There’ve been incidents all over the country.”

“It scares the life out of me.” I clutched Rowdy’s collar. “And here? With that shopping mall and then 128? Betty,
where
are your dogs?”

“In their crates, but it’s okay. Lois is keeping an eye on them. So did you talk to that woman? The one that called me?”

“Yeah. Enid Sievers. I went over there Friday. I’m going to go pick the dog up tomorrow and drive her out to you, if that’s okay.”

Betty nodded. Her white curls shook. “What’s she like, what’s her name, Missy?”

“Yeah. Missy. For a pet shop dog, she’s really quite decent looking, and she’s
really
sweet. It’s just, really, it’s just a bad match. I mean, the husband got the dog from Puppy Luv, and then he died, and this woman is the last person who could cope with a malamute, and when you consider that, the dog is amazingly well behaved, housebroken, nondestructive, very submissive. She needs to be spayed, but that’s about it.”

“Great,” Betty said.

“Uh, but there is sort of a problem,” I said reluctantly. “It’s about her papers.” I examined a thin braided-leather lead.

“You get them?”

“No. But I got a look at them. There’s sort of a problem.” I rested my hand on Rowdy’s head and began to rub him gently. “I don’t exactly know what to do about it. I don’t even know …” Without thinking, I raised my hand to cover my mouth.

Betty guessed immediately. “AMCA breeder?”

The first provision of the code of ethics of the national breed club, AMCA, the Alaskan Malamute Club of America, is this: “No member shall knowingly be involved in the sale of puppies through pet shops or any other type of wholesale outlets, including mail-order houses, dog agents, or federally licensed dog dealers or individuals or institutions involved in research.” Just in case anyone misses the point, the second provision goes on to forbid the sale of litters for resale.