The Wicked Flea (5 page)

In brief, my intuition advised that Rowdy would behave slightly better than Kimi. To protect Rowdy from the hideous sight of a male Newfoundland occupying space in
his
car, I removed the metal travel crates from the Bronco and incarcerated Rowdy in a blessedly opaque Vari-Kennel. Furthermore, Ceci and I wisely abided by a second rule of dew claw, the one that says to introduce dogs on neutral turf. Rowdy and Quest met a few houses down the street from Ceci’s rather than in Rowdy’s precious, if ancient and dented, Bronco.

The moment Rowdy saw the monumental black Newfie, he obviously came to an important decision, which was that Quest did not exist. After a single initial glance, Rowdy stared right through the big dog. Inside his Vari-Kennel on the drive to the park, Rowdy didn’t growl, rumble, or fuss at Quest’s proximity. Why protest the presence of a dog who wasn’t there? Even a dog whose weight had practically broken my arms and back when I’d half lifted him into the car? When we arrived at the park and took both dogs out of the Bronco, Rowdy surveyed the scene with his usual curiosity. Clear Creek Park, I should mention, was not some stingy patch of vegetation, but a generous area of perhaps thirty or forty acres that included open fields and dense woodland. Now, Rowdy scanned the blacktop parking lot, the tennis courts, a playground, a large wooded area in the distance, the cloudless sky, and a vast playing field, its grass still green, where four people in bright parkas huddled together near a group of frolicking dogs. He took in absolutely everything except Quest. Etiquette provides a term for this extreme form of snubbing. As I recall, it’s known as
the cut direct.

“Oh, I do think that our boys are going to be dear friends,” Ceci gushed. As always, she was carefully made up and becomingly dressed. Her champagne-colored jacket had a hood trimmed with what she had assured me at stupefying length was artificial fur. Although I’d heard all about her devotion to Newfoundlands, I suddenly realized that one source of her attraction to the breed was the startling contrast between her pale daintiness and the breed’s dark monumentality. “Rowdy has been very good with Quest, hasn’t he? Good boy, Rowdy! You can always tell when dogs form friendships, can’t you! You can see it in their eyes. Rowdy, you’ve taken a real liking to Quest, haven’t you? What a good dog! Oh, there’s Noah. He’s the round little man, and those four brown shepherd mixes are his, all from shelters, he’s such a noble soul, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Jonna, isn’t that cute?”

It seemed to me that the hour, seven-thirty A.M., was too damned early for cute, especially canine cute, but I was delighted to hear the enthusiasm in Ceci’s voice. Althea had spoken to me in private about her worry that Ceci felt obliged to spend most of her time at home. Althea actually liked to have her sister go out, not only because Althea didn’t want to be a burden, but because Ceci’s unending chitchat grated on Althea’s nerves. Now, making her way eagerly toward the group of dogs and people, Ceci picked up her pace and tried to cajole Quest to do the same. “Sweetheart! Let’s go play with our friends! Let’s go!” she enjoined loudly. Quest raised his tremendous head a bit and may have picked up his lumbering pace a trifle, but Ceci was satisfied. “He just loves coming here, don’t you, sweetie? Who is Mommy’s best boy? Is Quest? Is Quest Mommy’s good boy who loves to play with the other doggies?”

In public! With someone
listening
! I cringed at the prospect of Ceci’s introducing me in a similar fashion to Douglas, the man she had in mind for me:
Now Dougie, this is Holly-Wolly, and she is Mommy’s best girl, isn’t she? She’s a good girl who just loves to play with the men, aren’t you, Holly?
But Douglas wasn’t there; Noah, owner of the four Gospels, was the only man in the group. The three women with him were presented to me only as the mommies of Chomsky, Princess, and Henry David Thoreau. Chomsky was a soft-coated wheaten terrier, a male in desperate need of grooming. That’s the hitch about wheatens. They’re cheerful, perky, friendly, cooperative, charming, medium-size dogs, perfects pets, except that they absolutely, positively need regular brushing, bathing, and trimming, and when I say
need,
I’m speaking (as usual) from the dog’s point of view. If that soft coat gets filthy and matted the way Chomsky’s was, the dog’s skin becomes irritated and sore. Why do people who hate grooming insist on getting these high-maintenance breeds?

As is perhaps all too apparent by now, the attitude of dog-show types toward pet people is the attitude that concert pianists take toward enthusiastic amateurs who struggle to pick out “Go Tell Aunt Rhody” on the glockenspiel. Our justification for the insufferable condescension is that they know nothing, we know everything, they’re always wrong, we’re always right, and what’s more, when we try to educate them, are they grateful? No! Gee, I can’t imagine why. For once, I refrained from lecturing. Fortunately, the remaining two dogs were black Labs and thus had short, smooth, easy-care coats. Princess was young, lean, and fit, but poor Henry David Thoreau was grotesquely fat, like a whale with legs, as I did not say aloud.

As Ceci had said in pointing him out, Noah was a round little man. He had the fuzzy brown hair and the warm, safe appeal of a teddy bear, an image he probably sensed and hated. Even so, his red parka, which matched the red collars on his shepherd-mix dogs, would’ve been suitable for the L. L. Bean toy known as L. L. Bear. Together with the mommies, clad, respectively, in purple, blue, and yellow, Noah extended an enthusiastic greeting to Rowdy and expressed a gratifying interest in him.

“We used to have a husky here,” said the woman in purple, “but he got run over.”

The woman in blue corrected her. “This is a mala-mute. Isn’t he?”

“Yes,” I said.

“You might want to think about getting him neutered.”

“He’s a show dog.” I could’ve elaborated by sharing the news that a highly esteemed breeder of malamutes who lived in the state of Washington had just E-mailed me, inquiring about the possibility of using Rowdy at stud. The breeder, Cindy Neely, also happened to be a friend of mine and a fellow soldier in the trenches of malamute rescue. That is, Cindy and I devoted the spare time we didn’t have to finding homes for homeless malamutes. In that case, why breed more mala-mutes? Where else were healthy, correct dogs like hers and mine supposed to come from? But I digress.

“You can let Rowdy loose,” the woman informed me. “There’s a leash law, sort of, but the dogs always play here, and people turn a blind eye, more or less. Lately, it’s been less, but no one minds this early. Rowdy is beautiful. I’m sure he wins all the time.”

Pet people! There isn’t a show dog on earth who wins
all
the time. Still, I intended to thank her and to say something nice about the dogs romping in the field, but before I had a chance, Ceci said, “Holly has two malamutes, a male and a female, the girl is Kimi, and we’ll have to get Holly to bring her here sometime, too, she’s a sweetheart, but the point is that Holly knows everything about dogs, and she’s going to solve all our problems with Zsa Zsa.”

I do know some things about dogs. For example, I understood that Rowdy was at that moment allowing Quest to sniff his big rear paws only because Quest was an imaginary dog and thus wasn’t there. “What I know is far from everything,” I protested. “But Ceci was telling me about the problem, and she thought it might help to have a fresh perspective.”

“We were just talking about Zsa Zsa,” Noah said. The woman in yellow laughed. “She’s all we ever talk about!”

“That’s not true,” objected the woman in purple. “We talk about how well all the other dogs get along. Chomsky—he’s the wheaten—is the most selfdirected. He pretty much does his own thing
around
the other dogs, on the periphery, and he likes them, but after he runs with them for a few minutes, he loses interest. And then he sniffs things.”

“I’ve deprived Chomsky of the benefit of siblings,” explained the woman in yellow. “He’s an only child, so he’s had to learn to entertain himself. Aren’t you going to let Rowdy play?”

“He isn’t necessarily good with other dogs,” I said apologetically, meaning that the handsome boy was my life’s blood, and I didn’t want his flowing in the street after he’d been hit by a car.

“Unsocialized,” the woman said matter-of-factly.
OBEDIENCE-TITLED-CANINE-GOOD-CITIZEN-BREED-CHAMPION-BREEDING-QUALITY-CERTIFIED-THERAPY-DOG!
I wanted to reply just like that! Hyphenated, all one word, all capital letters, one long, loud, dog-proud brag. But like Rowdy and Kimi, I am socialized. Also, her wheaten, Chomsky, was peacefully wandering around off leash without getting into dog fights or any other trouble, and in that limited sphere of behavior, he probably was superior to Rowdy. Not that there’s so much as a competitive metatarsal in my body, but as a dog show type, I find myself oddly reluctant to enter a My Dog’s Better Than Your Dog contest that my dog is bound to lose.

“There you have it.” Noah spoke with the cadence of a radio preacher. “Dogs that come to the park and socialize all learn to get along together.” He didn’t actually finish with
amen,
but the word hung in the air all the same. Could he really be a minister? The Gospel dog names—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Jonna— sounded a bit blasphemous even to me, but maybe the intention had been devout. In any case, the loose dogs seemed to support his contention about the benefits of off-leash play. Chomsky remained happily on the fringes of the group, as Noah’s mixed breeds and the Labs tore around. With a guilt-ridden glance in my direction, Ceci removed Quest’s leash. The excitement of meeting Rowdy and riding in the car, however, seemed to have exhausted the old dog’s energy. He sank to the grass in a bearlike heap.

‘That hardly applies to Zsa Zsa,” one of the women pointed out. “I mean, Zsa Zsa isn’t exactly a walking ad for playing with other dogs, and Sylvia’s yard is next to the park. It’s five minutes from here. Zsa Zsa’s been coming here for ages, and you couldn’t exactly call her socialized. Really, she’s just getting worse and worse.”

“I hate to say it,” another woman remarked, “but I’m afraid the truth is that Zsa Zsa just is not a very nice dog. Naturally, you can’t expect Sylvia to see it that way.”

“Has anyone tried talking to Sylvia?” I asked.

“Sylvia knows damn well that Zsa Zsa’s ruining the park for the rest of us,” Noah said. “Hey, who keeps the park safe? We do! Dog walkers. The rest of us knock ourselves out to fight the antidog sentiment. We go around with our pockets full of plastic bags. We clean up after our dogs. Our dogs don’t go around chasing the joggers and jumping on people and scaring little old ladies.” Suddenly aware of Ceci’s presence, Noah reddened and had the sense not to elaborate.

“It’s true,” said the woman in purple. ‘Technically, there’s a leash law, but no one used to care all that much, except for a few cranks who complained if they stepped in dog doo, but really our dogs just play together.” She swept an arm toward the nearby pack. “They’re not bothering anyone.”

“Does Sylvia—?” I started to ask.

Noah interrupted me. “Sylvia knows. Her son complains to her all the time.”

The woman in purple corrected him. “Son-in-law. He’s married to Sylvia’s daughter. I forget his name.”

“Leo’s daddy,” someone said. Or that’s what it sounded like.

Ceci spelled out the name. “L-l-i-o. Llio is a Pembroke Welsh corgi, just like the Queen’s dogs, although I must say that despite the Welsh and all that, tradition, respect for the breed’s origins, and so forth, it still strikes me as a foolish name for a girl, because after all, we’re not in Wales, are we?” She had a momentary look of genuine puzzlement. As if announcing a comforting discovery, she cried, Columbus-like, “We’re in America!” Ceci’s daffiness, I might mention, drove her sister wild. Or as wild as the logical Althea ever got. “It’s not mental deterioration,” Althea had informed me. “That sort of lunacy used to be fashionable in young women.”

“Be that as it may,” Ceci continued, “Llio is perfectly charming, not to mention quite, quite beautiful, and her daddy is a model of responsible ownership. So we feel certain that he has talked sternly to Sylvia.”

“I wonder,” I suggested, “whether all of you might try putting the problem to Sylvia directly. Sometimes people don’t pay all that much attention to members of their own families.”

“You don’t know Sylvia!” one of the women exclaimed. The other people laughed.

“That’s true,” I agreed.

“Sylvia makes a joke out of everything,” Ceci explained, “including poor Wilson, her son-in-law, who is really a very nice young man.” She broke off. “Speaking of him, there he is now.”

Rapidly approaching from the direction of the woods was a tall, dark-haired man carrying a retractable lead, at the end of which was a really beautiful Pembroke bitch, which is to say a show-quality Pembroke Welsh corgi female. Corgis are tough, sturdy herding dogs, with substantial bodies and short legs. Handy mnemonic: long tail, long sleeves, Cardigan. As in sweater. Cardigan Welsh corgis have long tails. The ones with the short tails are Pembrokes. Llio, whose name had come up earlier, stood about ten inches at the withers, the withers being above the forelegs, more or less where a dog’s back stops and the neck begins. She must’ve weighed about twenty-five pounds. Her head was what the standard—the official description of the ideal Pembroke—calls “foxy,” meaning what it says, reminiscent of the head of a fox. Ears are terribly important in Pembrokes. In fact, the language of Pembrokes abounds in derogatory terms for bad ears; the breed is not supposed to have bat ears, hooded ears, catlike ears, button ears, rose ears, or drop ears. Llio’s were lovely: medium sized, erect, and neither too pointed nor too round at the tips. Color and markings are also important in the Pembroke ring. In fact, the standard is exceptionally detailed, so almost every feature is vital. Llio was black and tan with white on her legs and chest, where it’s allowed. She had an intelligent expression and a smooth gait. Suddenly, the sun was shining a bit more brightly than it had been only moments earlier. Ever noticed that phenomenon? It happens whenever a beautiful dog appears.