The Dogfather (9 page)

The boss had been right to be wary of public places. Furthermore, what had felt like his senseless prohibition on puppy kindergarten now seemed sensible. Somehow, I’d have to socialize and train Frey without becoming a Sicilian message to Enzio Guarini. As I finished my second cup of morning coffee, I jotted down an intensive training plan for Frey. Rowdy and Kimi, seeing my edginess, watched me with the same trust I’d felt from them in the dream. With regard to dog training, their trust was well placed. I told them so. “When it comes to people,” I said, “I’m perfectly likely to bungle things, but I do know how to train dogs. No public places? We’ll create them here. No puppy kindergarten? We’ll do our own.” I picked up the phone and called Steve at his clinic. “How you doing?” I asked.

Proving the point I’d made to Rita, he said, “Sammy is quite a character.” Steve went on to report that India was mothering Sammy and that Lady was afraid of him. Steve and I agreed that since Lady was afraid of everything, her reaction was normal, at least for her.

"What’ve you been up to?” he asked with an attempt at casualness.

“Up to?” I replied, thinking of Guarini. “Nothing! Nothing at all! Not a thing. Not one thing.” Coming to my senses, I said, “Actually, I’m training a puppy who needs socialization, and it occurred to me”—a gross understatement—“that I could do a sort of mini puppy class here with him and Sammy. Basic socialization. Puppy play. Fun stuff. Very carefully supervised. I don’t believe in leaving puppies free to practice bad behavior. You interested?”

After making sure that Frey had been thoroughly vet checked and was free of contagious diseases and up to date on his shots, Steve eagerly accepted the invitation.

Next I called Guarini, who again told me what good work I’d done with Carla’s coffin-dancing little fiend, Anthony.

“Elementary,” I said modestly. “I have a new plan for Frey. The story is that a friend of mine has a malamute puppy, younger than Frey, and I want to get the puppies together here. It’s a great opportunity to socialize Frey.” Guarini agreed. The plan was that on prescheduled weekday mornings, Steve or one of his assistants would drop Sammy off here. At ten, Frey would arrive. He’d stay for two hours of puppy play and training before being limoed home. I’d then return Sammy to Steve’s, or keep him with me. Steve would never run into Guarini’s men. In the two hours Frey was with me, I could do multiple brief training sessions with him. And, of course, I’d get to spend time with Rowdy’s little son. Perfect! For the rest of the day, I puppy-proofed the house, set up crates, and assembled supplies. While I was at it, I put together a puppy-training lesson plan for Guarini to use with Frey.

Holly’s Puppy School opened its door the next morning when Sammy the malamute barged into my kitchen right on schedule. Rowdy and Kimi were in their crates in my bedroom. Why? Because when it comes to malamutes, true love means deep understanding, which means profound mistrust; I intended to introduce Rowdy and Kimi to Sammy one grown-up dog at a time, very gradually and very carefully. First, the big dogs would get used to the scent of Sammy in their house, as they were doing this morning.

Sammy busied himself distributing that scent. His baby tail waving in the air, Sammy bounded and bounced from room to room, corner to corner, lingering to sniff and paw, then eagerly returning to the adventure of puppy-mapping this brand new territory. Every puppy is Neil Armstrong, and the planet Earth is every puppy’s moon.

Sammy’s partner in exploration, Frey, arrived on schedule at ten, delivered by Zap, who failed to recognize Sammy as the puppy he’d seen at Logan and asked how much I wanted for him. When I’d sent Zap on his way, my little pupils got a ten-minute recess in the fenced yard, during which time I sat on the steps and watched the boys play. At first, Frey hid under a bush, but Sammy lured him out and before long, the two were the picture of busyness as they engaged in hide-and-go-seek without the hide, in other words, tearing around for the joy of tearing around. Except to work on housebreaking by offering praise and treats for going outside (“Good puppy!”), I didn’t have to step in at all. The mistake Guarini had made in trying to housebreak Frey had been the common one of letting him out. To house-train a puppy, you don’t just
let
him out. You
take
him out so you’re right there to reinforce the desired behavior.

After recess, Sammy had nap time in a pint-size crate, while I worked with Frey on the fundamentals of canine civilization: come, sit, down, stay. Guarini’s pup and I practiced off leash in my kitchen, in my living room, and in my fenced yard; and on leash in my driveway. As I told Frey, he was brilliant, excellent, wonderful; he was my good dog, my good puppy, my good Frey. He learned quickly, and, in so doing, he was rapidly going to break my ties to his master. The puppies then got another run in the yard. When I’d crated the little ones, Rowdy and Kimi got to go outside. After returning the big dogs to their crates, I again worked with Frey, and then he and Sammy tore around. Finally, I leashed Frey, took him into the yard, and in calm, rewarding circumstances, introduced him to startling stimuli: a bicycle and a bicycle horn. Back in the house, Frey met Tracker, my cat.

Two hours of puppy home-schooling felt like twenty minutes. After Zap had picked up Frey, far from being tired, I was so energized that I whipped off a column for
Dog’s Life
about the happy privilege of seeing the world through puppy eyes. In the late afternoon, Guarini and I did phone-assisted dog training. I sat at my kitchen table sipping coffee, scratching Rowdy under the chin, and talking to Guarini. The same capo who juggled racketeering, extortion, money laundering, and so forth somehow couldn’t manage Frey, the clicker, the treats, and his cell phone all at once, so he used a speaker phone to listen to me coach him in attention training and in the basic obedience exercises Frey and I had practiced that morning. An advantage of helping an experienced dog person like Guarini was that he understood the importance of keeping the training session short and fun. He had a good voice for dogs, and his praise was genuine. I hoped that the successful day would set a pattern for the next few weeks, by the end of which Guarini would no longer need my help with Frey.

Feeling optimistic, I checked my e-mail. In addition to the usual zillion messages I always get from Malamute-L, Dogwriters-L, Caninebackpackers, a couple of obedience lists, and the list for members of the Alaskan Malamute Club of America, I had two personal messages. One message was from my friend Mary Wood, who lived in California. Mary’s position in the malamute community—Family Redefined—was similar to mine. Mary had only two dogs, both malamutes, a male and a female. Like Rowdy and Kimi, Mr. Wookie and Miss Pooh were beloved house pets as well as show dogs. Mr. Wookie had rocketed to “mal-fame” at the age of fourteen months by winning Grand Sweepstakes the Alaskan Malamute National Speciality in Louisville, Kentucky. Rocketed? It was his
first
show. That’s impressive. Now, like Rowdy, he was what’s called a “specials dog”—a dog who has finished his championship and is competing for Best of Breed and stardom in the Working Group. Lots of people who campaign specials use professional handlers, but Mary Wood handled Mr. Wookie herself. Malamute people used to say that if Mary really wanted the dog to go places, she’d have to hire a professional. Mary silenced her critics by owner-handling Mr. Wookie to Best of Breed at the National Specialty and, soon thereafter, at the AKC/Eukanuba Classic. Showing Mr. Wookie was the point of Mary’s e-mail. The two of them were coming to New England.

Mary gave me their jam-packed itinerary; no one travels all the way from California to enter one show. Their first show in this area was the Saturday after next. As I told Mary in my e-mail reply, Rowdy and Kimi were both entered. As I didn’t tell her, with Mr. Wookie in the ring, Rowdy was going to lose. Rowdy is a good dog and a good show dog, but reality is reality, and the judge, Harry Howland, had had Mr. Wookie in his ring before and loved him every time. So why not leave Rowdy at home? Because the more dogs Mr. Wookie defeated, the higher he’d rise in the rankings, that’s why. Yes, I’m a good sport.

The second message was from Steve, who invited me to dinner at Aspasia, a divine restaurant on Walden Street only a block from my house. I e-mailed my acceptance. A year earlier, when my relationship with Steve was in its previous incarnation, it wouldn’t have been a big deal to go out to dinner with him. Let me rephrase that. Once, long ago, back when I took Steve for granted, I’d have made no big deal of going out with him. As a dog trainer, I knew damned well that behavior was governed by its consequences. The behavior in question: my taking Steve for granted. The consequence: Steve’s marrying someone else, and not just anyone else, but Anita Fairley, an embezzler and a bitch, not that Steve knew about her criminal activities when he married her. As to her bitchiness?

Having resolved to modify my behavior, I subjected myself to as thorough a grooming as the dogs get before a show. Dog-minded as I was and am, I respected the species differences. For example, I did not chalk my legs with cornstarch and brush it out, but I did shave my legs and even went so far as to neaten my nails, with an emery board, let me emphasize, not with Rowdy and Kimi’s orange handled clippers. I did the whole bit: applied makeup, blew my hair dry. Cambridge being Cambridge, I could’ve worn anything from old jeans and a T-shirt to a floor-length velvet dress. Cambridge is big on options. Leaving options open is the basis of the arguments that Cambridge parents use in convincing their kids to attend the local college: Once you have your Harvard degree, dear, your options will be open. What the kids don’t know is that Harvard crimson won’t wash out; like shirts sent to a laundry that uses indelible ink, Harvard students stay marked for life.

But I’m avoiding the issue. Steve’s soon-to-be ex-wife, Anita, was incredibly beautiful and wore expensive, fashionable clothes. Feeling like a jealous teenager, I pawed through the contents of my closet. Rowdy reduced my options by snatching a black skirt and running off with it. So long as he and Kimi didn’t use it to play tug-of-war, it would survive, but it was already too thick with dog hair to wear. I settled on a gray skirt and top that were probably covered with malamute coat, but at least didn’t show it. To the best of my recollection, I’d never seen Anita in gray. Have I mentioned that she hated dogs?

Where was I?

The new awkwardness between Steve and me had its limits; he didn’t go so far as to make a formal appearance at the front door. When he entered the kitchen, Rowdy and Kimi did the malamute equivalent of falling all over him by wagging their entire bodies and emitting melodious, half-howled greetings, all the while fixing predatory eyes on the bouquet of delphiniums he held high above their reach.

“You’ve done something to your hair,” he said. “You look nice.”

“Thank you.” In case the delphiniums were inexplicably for Rita instead of me, I didn’t thank him for them. Also, I didn’t return his compliment by telling him the truth about his own appearance, which was that he looked like a combination of Mel Gibson and the young Paul Newman.

“Aren’t delphiniums the ones you like?”

“They’re my favorites. They’re beautiful. Thank you.” Delphiniums are toxic to dogs. So are many other ornamental plants, including, irony of ironies, holly. Luckily, Rowdy and Kimi had never shown any interest in vases of flowers.

“Thanks for having Sammy here.”

“My pleasure. I’m crazy about Sammy. You can leave him here whenever you want.”

Steve smiled. “Now? He’s in my van.”

“The puppy crate’s right here. Rowdy and Kimi can stay in the...”

Bedroom.

I’m going to sound like Rita, but I have to say that our precautions about maintaining distance between Sammy and the adult dogs mirrored our concern about maintaining distance from each other. The chances were good that if turned loose with little Sammy, neither Rowdy nor Kimi would’ve hurt the puppy. And just how safe together were Steve and I?

CHAPTER 10

The dinner, and the expensive pinot noir we drank with it, induced in me an unfamiliar sense of contentment and optimism, especially about Steve. It is often said of companionable but discontented couples that the chemistry just isn’t there. With us, the chemistry always had been there and still was. Furthermore, we’d never been and obviously wouldn’t become one of those couples who disagreed about pets or fought about dogs. Dogs were, however, one of the reasons we’d never lived together. India, Steve’s shepherd—German shepherd dog—wouldn’t sacrifice her dignity by starting a dog fight, even with Kimi, whom India viewed as a threat to civilization as India knew it and liked it. Kimi, in turn, saw India as a complacent reactionary who’d been co-opted by the forces of repression and thus constituted a threat to the ultimate triumph of radical canine feminism. As to Kimi’s views about Lady, Steve’s pointer, Kimi showed a regrettable lack of sisterly feeling. Far from sympathizing with Lady’s fearfulness, Kimi went out of her way to intimidate Lady by grabbing Lady’s toys, barging ahead of her, and slamming into her as if by accident. India, who was nobly protective of Lady, would glare at Kimi, who’d return the silent warning with a snarl. Rowdy respected India and liked Lady, who was frightened of him and stayed out of his way. And Sammy? Two male malamutes might learn to coexist. Or might not. The Kimi-Sammy combo? But why on earth was I working out the possibilities of living with all five dogs when Steve and I, far from being on the verge of combining households, had merely advanced to sharing a table at a restaurant?