The Wicked Flea (6 page)

Human and canine members alike, the dog group had an endearing habit of greeting each new arrival with warmth and enthusiasm. The people welcomed Llio by name and called out to their own dogs: “Llio’s here! Come say hi to Llio!”

“Llio stays on leash, too,” the woman in purple informed me. “Don’t you, poor girl?”

“She’s beautiful,” I said to her owner, the tall, darkhaired man. From a distance, he’d looked moderately attractive, but viewed from up close, he was unappealing. Although he’d shaved, his hair was greasy, and his teeth needed the attention of a skilled hygienist. He was munching on a jelly doughnut. Grains of sugar clung to his thin lips. Someone should have told him to close his mouth when he chewed. Still, his bitch was beautiful. “Do you show her?”

After replying that he did, he complimented Rowdy and asked whether I showed him, as I did and do, and then naturally I recounted a few high points of Rowdy’s career in the breed and obedience rings, and Llio’s owner reported that she needed only one major to finish, meaning, as almost no one else there understood, that Llio needed only one major win (a win worth three or more points) to finish her championship. My own bitch, I said, hadn’t finished yet. My cousin was handling her for me, but I always used a professional handler for Rowdy. Did my new acquaintance handle his bitch himself? No, he didn’t. By now, Noah, Ceci, and the other mommies had tuned us out and were saying hello to a variety of people and dogs joining the group.

Having discovered that we were both show people, Llio’s owner and I ignored the proletarian hordes surrounding us and continued to converse about bitches, majors, professional handlers, recent shows, upcoming shows, and various other topics of exclusive interest to the dog elite. Eventually, I said that my name was Holly, and he said that his was Wilson, and then we were off again. Long before that, it had become apparent to me that Wilson’s dog-social standing was not quite... what’s a nonsnobbish way to say this? In the, a-hem, highly structured social world of the dog fancy, my own standing borders on the illustrious, not so much because of my own accomplishments as because of my late mother’s. She was not only a famous breeder of golden retrievers and a successful obedience competitor, but the sort of personable personage who joins everything and knows everyone who’s anyone in dogs, including, for example, Mrs. Nigel Waggenhoffer, whose name Wilson dropped. And when I say
dropped,
I mean let fall with a bang. Mrs. Waggenhoffer is big in goldens and is the president of the prestigious Micmac Kennel Club, to which I belong and Wilson didn’t.

“I was the co-breeder on some of my mother’s litters,” I explained modestly. “I’m sort of a legacy admission. I’m not active in the club at all.”
So don’t even think about asking me to sponsor you,
I wanted to add.

Changing the subject, Wilson said, “You hardly ever see any show people at the park.”

“We don’t let our dogs off leash,” I said. “That’s one reason.”

In low tones, Wilson confided, “These pet people don’t know anything. Take the wheaten. Chomsky. Jesus, the poor dog, he’s all matted. She lets him get like that, worse than that, and then she takes him to the groomer and has him shaved. It’s awful. And Thoreau, that’s that fat Lab over there, is a blimp. She’s killing him.”

“The dogs really do seem well socialized,” I pointed out.

Wilson rolled his eyes. “What’s it going to matter if they’re dead?”

Chapter 9

As Wilson and I were chatting, yet more new people and dogs arrived. By now, there must’ve been a couple of dozen dogs of all sizes, shapes, and colors, including two standard poodles, one black and one white, a pair of yellow Labs, three West Highland white terriers, and some of those fascinating mixes whose ancestry inspires guessing games with no known right answers. The big spotted dog gently herding the Westies could well have been a Border collie-Newfoundland cross. A medium-size, short-coated tan dog looked like a million other All-American dogs, except for the peculiar and distinctively Chinese crested patches of long white hair on his head and tail. What had been a unified play group now consisted of three or four subgroups with a few lone dogs hanging out on the periphery and few happy pairs playing together. Ceci’s great big Quest had risen to his immense feet and was gently looming over an adorable Shih Tzu, who was barking directly into his face while executing the front-down, rear-up play bows that dogs use to invite one another to romp. Was I tempted to let Rowdy join the free play? Oh, yes I was. Did I remove his leash? I did not.

Although it was still early morning, the temperature was rising, and the mommies I’d identified by color had removed their parkas, as had Noah. Ceci was by far the oldest person there. A young Asian woman and a hefty, dark-skinned man added a little variety. As is usually the case, by comparison with the dogs, however, the human beings were annoyingly homogeneous. Some were taller or shorter, heavier or leaner than others, but no difference in human appearance began to rival the marvelous contrast between the giant Quest and the little Shih Tzu. Naked, we’d’ve looked even more uniform than we did with our clothes on. As I was reflecting on the aesthetic superiority of Rowdy’s species to my own, a male Dalmatian who’d been flying around in circles with a couple of buddies suddenly split off and sprinted toward the woods.

“Lydia,” someone called out. “Lydia!” Weird name for a male, right? These pet people! But Lydia turned out to be the owner, a red-haired woman in jeans and an “I Love My Dal” sweatshirt, who shouted, “Buster! Buster, you come right back here! Buster, bad dog! Damn it all!” Still hollering, she marched off in the direction the Dalmatian had taken before he’d disappeared into the woods.

Almost immediately, another woman appeared. This one was also looking for a dog. Slim and neat, she had shoulder-length brown hair streaked with gray. She wore a pale green coat over a matching suit. On her feet were cream-colored pumps, what I think of as real shoes, meaning that they made walking difficult and running impossible. Reaching the dog group, she exclaimed cheerfully, “The tart!” Then she bellowed, “Zsa Zsa, here! Damn it! Zsa Zsa!”

“Probably thinks that Damn It is her name,” Wilson murmured to me. “It’s all Sylvia ever calls her.” Turning toward him, I noticed something to which he seemed oblivious, namely, that Llio, his corgi, was not just squatting close to him, but was soaking his left shoe and the cuff of his left trouser with urine. Averting my gaze, I noticed people glancing at Wilson and Llio, and exchanging low-key smirks and silent snickers.

“Wilson,” the new arrival said loudly, “that dog is pissing on your foot again. Your pants are soaked.” Poor Wilson looked down at Llio and his left foot. Not everyone felt as sorry for him as I did. Giggles were audible.

“Thanks, Sylvia,” Wilson said with an edge in his voice. “Llio, bad dog!”

“Too late now,” someone told him gently.

“Zsa Zsa!” Sylvia bellowed. “There she is! Zsa Zsa! Get over here before I strangle you!” Sylvia’s tone, however, was affectionate.

Heading toward the group from the direction of the woods was a morbidly obese golden retriever.

“Sylvia, you’ve got to get that dog on a diet,” someone said.

“I tried diet food,” Sylvia replied, “but she didn’t like it. All she wants to do is pig out on burgers and fries.”

It seemed to me that if Wilson had had any pride, he’d have gone home to change his pants and shoes. But he was still hanging around. Watching his face, I could almost read his mind. His thoughts seemed identical to mine. Then, to my astonishment, he spoke them aloud.

“Then don’t give them to her,” he said. “If she doesn’t like low-calorie food, she won’t eat it, and she’ll lose weight.”

“The dog expert speaks!” Sylvia crowed. “At least Zsa Zsa’s housebroken. Llio’s ruined every rug in my house.”

Meanwhile, Zsa Zsa plodded toward us. To anyone who cared about dogs, she was pitiful. To someone who knew a bit about canine gait (yes, guess who the someone was), it was hard to know where to begin enumerating what was wrong with hers. As she drew close, I could see not only that she was grotesquely overweight, but that the excess pounds were badly distributed. Her shoulders were overdeveloped, and her whole front was monstrously heavy, but her hips and rear legs were scrawny. Her forelegs bowed and her back sagged as if she were carrying a cruelly heavy pack. With her hind legs, she took the mincing little steps of a woman in stiletto heels. In other words, because of weakness in the rear, her front end was doing all the work of dragging her around. When she ran, her rear legs moved under her in unison like a rabbit’s; the gait is known as “bunny hopping.” It’s hard to evaluate structure and movement in a fat dog. Still, Zsa Zsa was the picture of severe hip dysplasia. As Ceci had said, Quest was dysplastic. By comparison with this poor golden, he moved like a dream. And he wasn’t in pain. I’d have bet anything that Zsa Zsa was.

Empathy blinded me, as did anger. My own hip joints ached. And damn it! That pain was preventable. Where did dysplastic dogs come from? From dysplastic lines, that was where, and if every breeder would X-ray the hips of all breeding stock, the incidence of the disorder would plummet. Why breed Rowdy? So there’d be malamutes with his effortless gait. From the looks of Zsa Zsa, she’d come from a pet shop or a backyard breeder. If buyers would shop as carefully for puppies as they did for cars, then... cars? Hell, if they’d shop as carefully for puppies as they did for beer! Well, then—

When Zsa Zsa struck, Rowdy was ready. He’s a good dog, but he’s not big on empathy for other animals. Also, he cares nothing about the ethics of dog breeding; if the choice were his, he’d be the sire of thousands. Instead of wasting his time on thinking, Rowdy had watched Zsa Zsa and risen to his feet. He doesn’t believe in taking anything lying down, especially when the thing in question is an attack by another dog.

Zsa Zsa caught me completely unaware. The silence, suddenness, and power of her attack astounded me. In seconds, Rowdy and Zsa Zsa were one violent mass of writhing bodies and flashing teeth. Then Rowdy locked those massive malamute jaws in a vice grip on the skin of Zsa Zsa’s neck. The air itself reeked of a fight. The crowd of people around us parted to make room for the brawl. Sylvia was shouting at Zsa Zsa, and Ceci was shrieking a high-pitched, “No, no! Stop! Stop it!”

I had no excuse. In the eyes of other dogs, the stand-up ears, stand-off coat, and high tail carriage of the Alaskan malamute look aggressive. Even peaceful malamutes get attacked. And Rowdy wasn’t exactly Gandhi. Bad enough to have a fight. But a fight between two big dogs when all those other dogs were running around loose and might join the fray? Or start battles of their own? Rowdy was my responsibility. I should have been vigilant. After all, Ceci had warned me about Zsa Zsa. The second the notorious golden appeared, I should have done what I did now. With one hand gripping Rowdy’s leash, I stuck the other into one of the big pockets of my jacket and pulled out a small aerosol can with one visibly unusual feature. In place of a nozzle, it had a red plastic cone-shaped device. Brandishing the spray can, I reached outward and downward to position it as near as possible to one of Zsa Zsa’s ears. Then I pressed the button. The resulting clamor was almost unbelievable: WWAAAMMAAA! Imagine the wailing of a police cruiser combined with the greatly amplified mooing of an enraged cow. MMAAWWWWAAA!

The dogs sprang apart. To the relief of everyone within a mile, I suspect, I released the button, thus silencing the aerosol horn. Clasping Rowdy’s leash tightly, I called to him and bolted. If he hadn’t followed, I’d have dragged him, but he now had eyes only for me. I’d bought the aerosol alarm at a marine supply shop on the coast of Maine and carried it in case the need for it ever arose. Rowdy had never heard it before. Not that he’d previously underestimated my prowess as a mighty hunter and master of the universe! For years, he’d seen me leave on courageously lone pursuits of wild game and, in no time at all, return bearing slaughtered beasts all ground up and packed into forty-pound bags. Impenetrable obstacles gave way when I poked them with bits of metal. But never, ever had Rowdy even dreamed me capable of this monstrous roar!

Still clutching the horn in one hand, I used the other to check Rowdy for injuries, especially puncture wounds. No blood was visible, and my fingertips found no damage. As I went over him, I congratulated myself on having decided to bring Rowdy instead of Kimi. Rowdy had defended himself. He’d been ready to have the fight end. If Zsa Zsa had gone after Kimi, Kimi might have ignored the horn in favor of pursuing the famous best defense. The expression
bitch fight
sounds pornographic, but it’s the common term in the dog world for a fight between females. It connotes menace and fear, because at least one of the combatants often tries to go for the kill. Sexism? No, realism. Anyway, surveying the scene, I saw that Zsa Zsa had retreated to the periphery of the woods and that Sylvia had followed her there. Every other dog, however, and every other person was staring at me in amazement. Slowly and cautiously, I led Rowdy back to the group. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I didn’t know what else to do.”

Far from blaming me, everyone deluged me with questions about the means I’d used to perform the miracle. What
was
it? People were fascinated. By comparison, the Greek armies at Troy gave only a cursory glance at Achilles’ sword and shield. What’s more, so far as I could remember, Achilles’ comrades hadn’t flooded him with inquiries about where he’d bought his weapons and where they could get the same kind for themselves.