This Dog for Hire (16 page)

Of the other five patients on Sabotini's list, only one was female, Sivonia LeBlanc. I hadn't met her yet I wondered which of these names, if any, were real, if any of these people even remembered the names they had been given when they were young, healthy, and had homes of their own.

Sivonia LeBlanc. Yeah. Yeah.

I checked my watch. If I moved fast, I could be at the Garden by two, in plenty of time to ogle my favorite breeds. Then, after most of the dogs had been judged, the handlers would be available for dishing, rumormongering, and the purveying of vicious gossip. For this case, the world of purebred dogs might turn out to be just what the doctor ordered!

19

I Never Knew It Could Be Like This

It hit me as soon as I entered, even before I showed my ticket to the uniformed guardians of the gates to dog-person heaven, hit the way the flu does, gradually, but all at once too. In no time I was trembling, sweating, anxious, no longer in control, my legs like overcooked spaghetti. I could hardly navigate, but the crowd moved me along, swept me into the tunnel under the stands, on toward the benching area, my pulse rapid, my temperature rising like smoke on a clear day, until I felt like screaming, screaming out until I had lost my voice, yes, yes, yes, I never knew it could be like this.

Westminster! It's better than sex. And the way my life's been, more frequent too.

I took the escalator up a tier above the floor where the rings were, an old habit from my training days. I always liked to start out high up in the cheap seats, watching the rings from above. It was an interesting perspective on movement and gave one an overall look at all the rings at once. Amazingly, considering how vast the crowd was, I could usually spot my old friends, even from that lofty, distant perch. It wasn't difficult Captain Haggerty towered head and shoulders above the crowd, his head shaved bald. And the other person I wanted to see was also head and shoulders above the crowd. In his own way.

I looked down at the rings, both in them and around them. Inside the rings, the breeds were being judged, the judge assessing the dogs to see which of each breed came closest to that breed's standard, to see which the nearly perfect Platonic pointer, puli, or poodle was. They looked at the dogs stacked—standing in standardized positions according to breed—and checked the angulation of their legs, the line of their backs, the width of chest, the breadth of skull, their proportions, balance, overall beauty of form. Then the dogs were gaited, running one at a time with their handlers in a pattern set by the judge or all or many at a time, circling the ring, some breeds at what seemed like breakneck speed.

It had taken me a while to understand movement, thinking it was different for each breed. It is. And it isn't. Though a saluki and a Westie move very differently, in each case you're looking for the dog to move like a beautifully made, well-oiled machine.

From the movement, which is different with different structure, you can see if the dog would be able to work at the task he was bred for, rousting a rodent from its nest, moving the sheep, treeing the raccoon, finding the fox, bringing the shot-down bird to hand, whatever. At least, that's the theory.

In practice, much of the breeding for the ring was producing empty-headed beauty queens who wouldn't last half an hour doing the work that breed was originally bred to perform.

I watched some of the dogs gaiting, heard some cheers from the far left corner as the judge there made her selection, and then began to scan around the rings, finally spotting someone I knew.

His head was tilted just a tad to the left, as if he were listening to something very important that was difficult to hear. He still needed a haircut. His shaggy brown hair covered half his collar. And he was wearing the same damn Harris tweed jacket he always wore to the Garden. That meant he'd wear a blue blazer and a red tie tomorrow, for Best in Show. Some things never change.

I watched him for a while and thought about coming up behind him and grabbing his cute ass, just the way I always used to, asserting my right to be just as vulgar as any man, but when I got up to walk down the stands, I reminded myself that I had work to do. So I went straight to the Am Staff ring, not to the bull-mastiff ring where Chip Pressman stood, his arms folded across his chest, his catalog dangling from his right hand.

American Staffordshire terriers are sort of elegant pit bulls, the differences minor enough that some dogs have dual registration. That, however, was no reason for the people in either camp to like or respect each other's dogs. Deep in their hearts, Am Staff people tend to think of pit bulls as scrappy, unpredictable, badly bred mongrels. And pit bull people regard Am Staffs as beauty queens, dogs no longer up to scratch. A dog who wouldn't face his opponent by approaching the line scratched in the dirt of the pit lost the fight. Worse to some, he was considered a coward: If you said a pit dog turned, it meant he had turned back from the line, that he wasn't game. But if you said a Doberman turned, it meant something entirely different. It meant he turned on his master. He wasn't a coward. He was an ingrate.

The handlers were stacking their dogs, lifting each leg, one at a time, and placing the paw carefully down in just the spot that would make the dog look best. The more confident handlers let their dogs free-stack, holding their attention with bits of dried liver or bait, which the handler might even place in his own mouth and soak with his own saliva to make it all the more appealing. Or appalling, depending upon your personal taste.

The bait gets the dogs to lean forward, making them look elegant rather than clunky, bringing them up on their toes, making their necks seem longer, giving the proper angle to their shoulder assembly and a nice extension to their rear legs.

The dogs focused on the liver. The handlers watched the judge. After walking down the line of stacked dogs, dogs always between the handler and the judge so that the handlers did not obstruct the judge's view, she gave the signal to move the dogs around the ring. The muscular beauties ran with their handlers. The judge watched carefully, occasionally whispering to the steward, who made notes in his book.

I left before the Best in Breed was selected. I'd see that dog tonight, when the groups were judged. It was seldom what I cared about. It is the behavior of a dog that interests me. To some people I've met over the years, behavior equals obedience. But while some compliance is necessary for the safety of the dog and the sanity of the owner, it is the delicious peeks inside a dog's mind that excite me, understanding how dogs learn, crack jokes, communicate, even how they can pick up the rules of a game and then change them, just as their human opponents can.

I headed for the benching area, stopping, as I always did, to buy a present for Dashiell, this time a new Flying Man because his old one was falling apart. It always amazed me to see a powerful adult animal playing with a faux-sheepskin gingerbread man with a squeaker in its belly, acting as silly and thrilled to pieces as any three-month-old. Dashiell would never find himself in therapy searching for his inner puppy.

I checked my catalog to make sure I wasn't about to bother anyone who was yet to go up and began to schmooze with handlers, first about their breed; then, if things went well, I'd progress to frozen semen and Morgan Gilmore.

There were two people sitting in the Akita area, and I knew the Akitas had gone up in the morning, so I admired one of the dogs, who was immediately removed from his crate and stacked for me in the crowded aisle. I guess I sounded like a potential puppy buyer and had found an owner. Her companion, a nononsense woman in the de rigueur ring outfit—longish A-line skirt, blazer, and thick-soled, clunky oxfords—I suspected was a handler. My suspicion was confirmed when she gave me her card, so that when the Akita puppy I was about to buy from her friend got old enough, she could handle it for me and make it a champion. Hey, if you want people to open up to you, you have to ingratiate yourself with a few appropriate lies.

As soon as I could, I slipped in my usual fable about a neat little basenji bitch—this time I said she belonged to my sister—and the wonderful deal we were offered. I tried to look as if I had just arrived from a farm in Kansas instead of a lair in Greenwich Village. The women passed a look between them, a combination of pity and alarm.

“Tell your sister that's not a good idea,” Trish, the handler, said.

“Why not?”

“Well, uh, you should be dealing with the owner?” Margaret, the Akita breeder said, looking again at Trish.

“I think like the guy who owns the dog has the handler take care of the breedings. Anyway, he said the dog was banked, you know, like a sperm bank, so—”

“Look,” Trish said, “it sounds fishy. You know what I'm saying?”

“You mean—”

“Right.” She looked all around to see who was within earshot. “The guy's a slime,” she whispered. “Never did anything in an upright way in his life.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Trish knows. She sees him at all the shows. I don't usually travel with Bomber,” Margaret said. “Trish shows for me. But of course, for Westminster, I mean, I wouldn't miss this for anything.”

“How'd he do?” I asked.

“
He
did fine. The judge prefers another type.”

“There's more than one type?” I said. Gee, and here I thought there was only one AKC standard.

“She likes a finer-boned dog. Bomber is heavy boned.”

Trish snapped the leash up and took a piece of liver from her pocket, and Bomber snapped to attention. “See?”

“Heavy boned,” I said. “Well, about the sperm thing. Are you sure? I mean, what sort of stuff were you referring to?” I whispered after looking around, not that
I
would know who to watch out for.

Margaret slid over, and I squeezed in next to her.

“I understand he gets real close with some of the judges,” she said.

“How close?” I asked.

“
Real
close,” Trish said, rubbing her forefinger back and forth along the ball of her thumb.

I clapped a hand over my mouth to express my astonishment.

I thanked Trish and Margaret, made a point of carefully putting their cards into my purse, then headed over to see the miniature bull terriers.

I began to chat with a stocky guy, mid-forties, male pattern balding, flat nose, drive-in pores, small, pale eyes, named Larry Benton, “but my friends call me Speed.” He showed me his dental implants, canines and all, and I hoped, for his sake, those friends weren't referring to his sexual pacing. At least he was eager to talk.

“They call him Liver Lips,” he said when I mentioned I was thinking of having Gil handle for me since he was so good with basenjis, “because what he does, see, he holds the liver in his mouth and makes it real juicy. Then he holds it here,” he said, pointing to the middle of his bottom lip, “and then spits it to the dog, see, and the dog catches it. Makes the dog look at his face, at Gilmore's face. The judges, they eat it up. They think it's rapport. Think the dogs actually
like
him. Act like he's fucking Jim Moses or somebody who can
really
bond with a dog. But get this, he also spits the pieces of liver as he runs, see, so it'll distract the other dogs, get them to break their gait trying to grab the treats. Going in the ring with him is a handler's nightmare.”

“Is that
legal
?”

“Legal, schmegal. Boy, are you naive. You like minis?”

“Love 'em,” I said. It felt weird to say something true.

“Willy Boy here's got the best head I've seen in the breed. You know they're a head breed?”

I nodded. “Who doesn't?”

He referred, of course, to shape, not content. A dog with the IQ of cement could still win Best in Show.

I looked beyond Speed to Willy Boy's crate and saw his blue ribbon proudly displayed. Apparently someone else agreed that Willy had a beautiful head, a funny thing to say about a bull terrier, if you think about it.

I took Speed's card: “Larry ‘Speed' Benton, Professional Handler, when you care enough to get the very best.” Original!

I needed to get out of the intense crowding of the benching area for a while, so I went back upstairs, high up, bought a soda and a hot dog, and went back to the cheap seats to observe from above, where at least there was some air. It was canned, but still it was air.

Looking down at the rings below, I watched the tail end of the judging, the bichon frises in ring one, the rotties in ring five, the giant schnauzers in ring six. The dignity of the Giants could be seen even from above, but from high up, the rottweilers moving looked like black pillowcases full of bricks being mysteriously thrust forward. The bichons were circling, too, just about ready for the final pick. I closed my eyes and waited for the screams.

I nearly jumped a foot when a hand touched my shoulder.

“Kaminsky! Is it you?”

“Hey, Pressman. Nice jacket. Is it new? How the fuck you been?”

“What's it your fucking business?” he answered.

We both started laughing, and he slid into the seat next to mine.

“Where've you been keeping yourself?”

“Um, the coast, mostly.”

“Yeah. Someone told me you were in California for a while,” he said.

“Did you say something?” I asked, after killing some time concentrating on the rottweiler judging.

“I asked if you'd been on the coast.” He was talking slowly and too loud now, as if he were talking to one of the inmates at the old folks home.

“I guess so.”

“You
guess
so? You guess L.A. or S.F.?”

“NYC.”

“NYC?”

“Yeah. The
East
Coast.”

“You mean you
weren't
in California?”

“Nah. I can't seem to tear myself away from the theater.”