Evil Breeding (7 page)

As I drove home, I honestly did see the same car more than once, or I was pretty sure I did. I can’t tell one make of car from another unless I’m close enough to read the lettering on the front or rear, or unless the car is something so distinctive that anyone would know what it was. This car was behind mine. I couldn’t read anything written on it. It was definitely not a 1950s Cadillac with tail fins, an old Porsche, or a VW bug. It wasn’t a station wagon or a four-by-four. But I know my colors; I went to kindergarten. The car was tan. I had the feeling it might not be American. But my primary feeling about the car had nothing to do with its size, color, model, or country of origin. Rather, I had the strong sense of being followed.

O
N SATURDAY MORNING
, heavy rain pelted Cambridge. Deferring to Rowdy’s hatred of water at any temperature above thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit, I left him at home and took Kimi for a three-mile run. After I’d returned, showered, and dressed, a glorious dog-training opportunity presented itself in the form of passing fire engines. With admirable presence of mind, instead of just seizing a clicker and treats to reinforce the dogs’ howling, I grabbed my tape recorder and dashed out the front door to Concord Avenue. The neighbors are used to me. If I ran outside naked and started shrieking about alien spaceships, the people up and down the block would shrug their shoulders and agree that I was practicing another new and probably harmless method of training dogs. Anyway, no one had me locked up, and although the taped sirens proved less provocative than the live performance, the dogs were already revved up from the real thing, and we made gratifying progress—and all this at a more civilized hour than two
A.M.
, I might note.

Then I checked my e-mail. I should perhaps explain that my office looks nothing like Mr. Motherway’s. For one thing, if I’d ever owned an antique desk, upholstered chairs, and Early American paintings, they’d long ago have been destroyed by dogs and replaced with the makeshift desk and other cheap graduate-student furnishings I now have. I really
do wonder just how Geraldine R. Dodge managed to protect her art collection. And what about Isabella Stewart Gardner? She was a dog lover, too, and
she
owned Rembrandts! They hung on the wall, of course. Even so, it galls me to think that Mrs. Dodge’s and Mrs. Gardner’s dogs may have been more civilized than mine. Anyway, the only expensive objects in my office are my computer and printer, so mine is a perfect example of the famous paperless office possessed by everyone enamored of technology, which is to say that it is a papery mess of first drafts, second drafts, final versions, photocopies, notebooks, legal pads, and Post-its, all containing information that I’m going to discard or put on the computer someday other than this one.

Instead of oil paintings of people, my walls display pictures of dogs and all sorts of other dog stuff, like a framed copy of Senator Vest’s famous Eulogy (“faithfull and true even to death”), certificates from the American Kennel Club attesting to titles my dogs have earned, and a bulletin board heavy with snapshots sent by people who read my column. The office also holds zillions of dog books and magazines, urns containing the cremated remains of departed canine loved ones, ribbons and trophies from dog shows and obedience trials, and, anomalously, the ugliest cat I have ever seen. In an effort at what Rita calls “positive reframing,” I named the cat after a famous Alaskan malamute, the late Ch. Kaila’s Paw Print, called Tracker, who was as beautiful as my feline Tracker is homely. Tracker is, however, far better-looking than she’d be if Rowdy and Kimi got hold of her. For a start, she’s alive. And yes, I am doing my damndest to train the dogs to accept Tracker. In the meantime, she and I share my office.

My newfound addiction to cyberspace has been a boon to Tracker. When I’d first adopted her, about three months earlier, she’d hissed and fled at the sight of me. These days, she still hisses when I move her off the mouse pad, but after that, she tolerates my presence and even hangs around in a more or less normal way, not that she does anything really normal and wonderful like baric, for example, or sing
woo-woo-woo
while wagging her tail in delight, but it has been a month since
she’s scratched or bitten me and a month since I’ve sworn at her, so we are beginning to make friends.

After politely asking Tracker to get off the mouse pad, I signed on—unlimited access, another gift from my father—and discovered a couple of replies to my inquiries about Mrs. Dodge and the Morris and Essex shows. The previous responses had been sparse, probably because most people who’d been active in the dog fancy in the late thirties were either dead or not on-line, which in the popular view these days means the same thing. The first reply was from Sheila, whose last name I should have remembered but didn’t She was on Dogwriters-L, the list for professional dog writers, of course. It read:

Harriet is not an American and Canadian champion, Companion Dog, Junior Hunter, and Canine Good Citizen, but she does belong to the Dog Writers Association of America and to numerous golden retriever clubs, including Yankee Golden Retriever Rescue. I know her through breed rescue. I help to find homes for homeless malamutes. Harriet lives in Connecticut. We see each other at shows and obedience events,
and we exchange e-mail. E-mail saves on phone bills, but has its limitations. For instance, when someone says she’d love to be a fly on the wall and asks whether the cat’s got your tongue, you can’t instantly find out what she means. I sent an e-mail reply to ask just that.

I remained fretful for the rest of the weekend. Steve and I went out to dinner on Saturday night. For once I had trouble deciding what to order. On Sunday we took our four dogs to the Berkshires for a hike made memorable by ticks and black-flies. When we got home, my Internet provider informed me that I had no new mail. Nonsense! I always have e-mail!

I spent Monday morning rechecking my e-mail, surfing the Web, and otherwise pursuing my research. For example, while visiting a Web site devoted to generating anagrams, I discovered that the letters in
Geraldine
could be rearranged to spell, among other things,
Danger lie, Angel dire
, and
Alien dreg.
The yield from
Geraldine R. Dodge
included the sadly appropriate
Aging elder odder. Holly Winter
produced
Wholly inert.
Taking the anagram as a hint, I signed off. My snail mail brought an overdue notice from the electric company, a threat from the phone company, two kennel-supply catalogs from which I couldn’t afford to order anything, and a plain white envelope with my name and address in block capitals, a postmark blurred to illegibility, and nothing in the upper-left-hand corner.

At first, I thought the envelope was empty. It wasn’t. It contained a long, narrow strip of paper with a blob of dry glue on one end. The glue, I soon realized, had originally fastened the strip of paper to a bottle of pills. An anonymous someone, for reasons I couldn’t fathom, had sent me a pharmaceutical company’s informational material about Soloxine, a drug commonly prescribed to treat hypothyroidism in dogs. Although I already knew what Soloxine was, I read the little brochure, mainly because I had no idea what else to do with it. Soloxine—levothyroxine sodium tablets—was a trademark of Daniels Pharmaceuticals, Inc., St. Petersburg, Florida. I sure could have used an all-expenses-paid week under a palm tree, but the uninformative envelope was now empty. A picture of the structural formula of the drug told me nothing. As
I knew, Soloxine was indicated for thyroid-replacement therapy in dogs. Primary hypothyroidism, the common kind, was caused by atrophy of the thyroid gland. Hypothyroidism sometimes appeared in young large-breed dogs, but was more typically found in middle-aged and older dogs of all sizes. I’d read the characteristic signs of hypothyroidism dozens of times in articles in dog magazines. About half of the articles said that the condition was overdiagnosed; the other half claimed it was underdiagnosed. The classic picture was of an overweight, lethargic dog with a poor coat and a sad expression. The brochure didn’t mention some of the relatively subtle behavioral signs of hypothyroidism. Some hypothyroid dogs hated to be brushed. Aggressive dogs sometimes sweetened up once hypothyroidism was diagnosed and treated. The pharmaceutical company dutifully listed contraindications, precautions, and adverse reactions, and went on to discuss dosage. The main point was to monitor thyroid levels in the blood and adjust the dosage accordingly. The big risk was thyrotoxicosis, in other words, thyroid poisoning, hyperthyroidism caused by an overdose.

Fine. But why me? I wasn’t overweight or lethargic, and neither were my dogs. My hair wasn’t styled like Rita’s, but there was nothing pathological about it, and Rowdy and Kimi had beautiful coats. Tracker? Hypothyroidism is common in dogs, both purebreds and mixes, but the characteristic thyroid problem of cats is exactly the opposite, hyperthyroidism. Tracker was not hyperthyroid. If she had been, so what? She was a spayed pet. Furthermore, I’d adopted her recently. Most people didn’t even know I owned a cat. And who cared about my hormones? Steve, of course, but if he’d thought there was something wrong with my libido, he wouldn’t have responded by mailing me a brochure about Soloxine. Besides, I was a dog writer and a dog person. The cryptic message of the Soloxine leaflet simply had to have something to do with dogs.

Yes, but what? A possibility came to mind. It concerned Rowdy’s and Kimi’s successes in the show ring. As I knew, or in some cases merely suspected, there were exhibitors who administered small doses of thyroid medication in an effort to
improve the dogs’ coats. Like many other hairy breeds, Alaskan malamutes “blow coat,” as it’s said, about twice a year; all of a sudden, they shed massive amounts of undercoat and guard hair. Last month’s perfect show dog becomes today’s perfect fright. Furthermore, some dogs simply have showier coats than others, and an alarming number of malamute judges act as if they’re hired to adjudicate at fluffiness contests. Consequently, a dog with a pretty coat and not much else sometimes takes the ribbons and the points from competitors with superior structure and movement. I had never tampered with Kimi’s female hormones to prevent the unhappy effects of her heat cycles on her coat. Not for a million ribbons would I have dosed a dog with any of the toxic coat enhancers thrust down the throats of show dogs: not thyroid medication, not steroids, not human birth-control pills, not arsenic. Arsenic? An old favorite. My dogs’ water gets run through a Brita filter. Meanwhile, I drink what comes straight out of the faucet. If I wouldn’t jeopardize my dogs’ health by giving them tap water, for heaven’s sake, I wasn’t about to fool around with thyroid medication. One of these shows, Kimi would finish her championship, but she was no big threat. Rowdy, however, was serious competition. What’s more, genetic good fortune combined with robust health, excellent veterinary care, an ideal diet, and careful grooming had given him an outstanding stand-off coat. Was a jealous competitor attributing Rowdy’s wins to Soloxine? If so, I couldn’t imagine who.

A second, remote possibility concerned an agreement I’d made to let Rowdy’s breeder use him at stud. Although the data aren’t absolutely clear, hypothyroidism seems to be especially common in Northern-breed dogs. To complicate matters, there’s disagreement about what should be considered normal thyroid levels in malamutes and their Arctic kin. One point of almost universal agreement, however, is that no ethical person knowingly uses a hypothyroid dog in breeding. Some people do it, of course. Rowdy’s breeder was not among those people. Neither was I! Rowdy and his proposed mate had both been screened. But had the condition ever occurred in Rowdy’s lines? Yes. Now and then, it cropped up
in every malamute line I’d ever heard of, just as it did in other breeds and in random-bred dogs. Even so, maybe someone without the guts to ask direct questions was suggesting that Rowdy should not be bred.

Once again, I upended the envelope and shook it. Nothing fell out. I tore it fully open. It was completely empty. Nothing linked that leaflet to the death of Christina Motherway.

I
HAD SEEN DOZENS
of photos of Geraldine R. Dodge. Three were my favorites. The first showed her with Rin Tin Tin. She and the famous dog faced each other. Their eyes met. Both wore relaxed smiles. He was sitting up, fore-paws in the air. She was kneeling. Her right hand was raised. Her index finger was pointing. At first glance, the gesture suggested that Mrs. Dodge had just told the shepherd to sit up and was now signaling him to keep on performing the trick. If you followed the direction of her finger, however, it became apparent that my soul mate, my kindred spirit, America’s First Lady of Dogs, was pointing Upward with a capital
U.
What’s more, close, emphatic study revealed that Mrs. Dodge was not kneeling in the ordinary, secular sense. Rather, with religious fervor akin to my own, she was genuflecting before God and Rin Tin Tin.

The second of my favorites must have been taken when Mrs. Dodge was very old. She sat outdoors. Tall trees and low shrubs rose in the background. To the right of her chair stood two of her beloved shepherds. Two more sat on her left, and, beyond them, another rested on the lawn. What drew me into the picture wasn’t just the obvious health and happiness of the beautiful and well-loved dogs. All five dogs were smiling, I admit. So was Mrs. Dodge. But what reached out and seized me were those six startlingly identical pairs of eyes.
Mrs. Dodge had seen the world through the eyes of her joyful dogs. They, in turn, gazed with delight at the perfect world she had created for them. When Mrs. Dodge was in her early eighties, her court-appointed guardians applied for legal permission to reduce the amount of money allotted to feed her dogs. Why the guardians? She had been declared mentally incompetent. Her husband had died the previous December. Although she paid $90,000 a year in taxes on her Fifth Avenue mansion, the house was never used and had been boarded up. In terms of dog ownership, she had hit what must have been the low point of her adult life: She shared the five hundred acres of Giralda with a mere forty-nine dogs. Her guardians applied to have the dogs’ annual food allotment drastically reduced from $50,000 to $14,000. On June 24, 1964, in Newark, New Jersey, Superior Court, Judge Ward J. Herbert ruled against the guardians. Mrs. Dodge’s dogs, he decreed, were entitled “to live in the style to which she had allowed them to grow accustomed.” That’s what the
New York Times
said. Gee, no wonder her shepherds had happy eyes. I said that.