Jingle Bell Bark

by Laurien Berenson

  Inside the ring, the judge was making short work of the puppy bitches. The entry was smaller in bitches than it had been in dogs. With a total of six bitches entered, only two points were at stake.

  However, after Winners Bitch had been awarded, Best of Variety would be called into the ring. The three champions in that class would be joined by the Winners Dog and Winners Bitch. Since both were still undefeated in the day’s competition, they were also contenders for the higher award. Not only that but the judge would choose between them for Best of Winners. Whichever Poodle received that designation would take home the higher number of points awarded in the classes that day. So if the Winners Bitch beat Zeke for BOW, she too would be credited with a three-point major.

  Every handler showing at Worcester understood the way the point system worked. Every single one had come to the show with a covetous eye on that major. They all wanted it just as badly as I did.

  I should have been watching the Puppy Bitch class and scoping out the competition. Instead I was busy making hasty repairs to Eve’s topknot, combing through her tail, and patting my pockets to make sure they held both a squeaky toy and several pieces of dried liver.

  Sam watched my harried and mostly unnecessary preparations with amusement. Cool as ice himself, he’d resigned himself to the fact that last-minute nerves always sent my stomach fluttering. “She looks great,” he said.

  I nodded in reply as the two puppies filed from the ring. Now it was my turn.

  Eve was the only Bred-by Bitch entered. Some judges rushed summarily though a single entry, since awarding the blue was usually a foregone conclusion. That could work against a nice dog, as it put them in the weaker position of having to go into the Winners class without having beaten any previous competition.

  Fortunately, Val took her time and paid attention. Eve showed like the pro she was fast becoming. Her stack was solid. Her movement was straight and correct. When I stopped in front of the judge at the end of the gaiting pattern, Eve looked past the liver I was holding, caught Val’s eye and wagged her tail.

  The judge was smiling as she motioned us to the marker. Always a good sign.

  Then we were back outside the ring again, waiting in the gate as the bitches in the Open class were judged. Aunt Peg studied the entry with a critical eye. An experienced Poodle judge herself, she could determine a Poodle’s quality, or lack thereof, at a glance.

  “I’ve seen better Open classes,” she muttered under her breath. “The brown’s the best of that lot, but that isn’t saying much.”

  The brown bitch was in the ring with Crawford. She wasn’t the soundest Poodle I’d ever seen. Nor, with her unbecoming light eyes, the prettiest. But Crawford presented her to the judge with all the flourish of an escort at a debutante ball. It was a handler’s job to highlight his entry’s good points and downplay her faults, and Crawford was a master at it.

  Nobody was surprised when he won the class, least of all Crawford. He accepted the blue ribbon, slipped it into his pocket, and then hurried the brown Poodle back to the head of the Winners lineup. I was behind him with Eve, and the cream bitch who’d won the Puppy class followed me.

  Val walked to the other side of the ring and stood, feet braced wide apart, hands clasped behind her back. She studied her choices for a long minute, her patient stance serving notice to those who were watching from ringside: this wasn’t going to be a quick decision, they’d better be prepared to wait.

  Speaking objectively—assuming that was possible under the circumstances—I had to say that Eve was the best of the three Standard Poodles in the ring. Unfortunately, there were other factors the judge would take into consideration. For one thing, she had just put an owner-handler up over the pros for Winners Dog. Did she dare do so again? For another, it was readily apparent that Crawford could handle circles around me. What was, and what he might be able to convince the judge to think, could be two entirely different things.

  And then there was the puppy, a pretty cream with a cute face, a nice way of going, and another professional handler at the end of her leash. Remember what I told you earlier? In Poodles, you never discount the puppy.

  All of which meant this wasn’t going to be easy. Possible, certainly. Doable, maybe. But easy? No way.

  Val lifted her hands and motioned for Crawford to lead the line around the ring. Since all of the entrants in a Winners class have just been seen by the judge in earlier classes, picking the winner can often be a cursory effort. Not this time. Val Homberg judged the three Poodles in front of her like she’d never seen them before; examining each and regaiting it, comparing it to the others and considering.

  When she sent us around a final time, she hadn’t changed our order. Crawford was still at the head of the line. My shoulders slumped ever so slightly. I assumed she’d made her choice and the brown bitch was it. Then I glanced over and realized that Val hadn’t taken her eyes off of Eve.

  And when she raised her hand and indicated the Poodle she wanted, her finger was pointing straight at us.

  “Yes!” I said under my breath.

  There was no time to stop and celebrate the win. Nor to recomb Eve. Instead, as the three specials came striding into the ring, I slipped her a piece of liver as a reward. Then we dropped back to take our place at the end of the line. Aunt Peg with Zeke, the Winners Dog, was just in front of us.

  “Pay attention now!” she said just loud enough for me to hear. “You’ve got two points, but you can have three.”

  Instead of stacking Zeke and holding him at attention as the other handlers were doing, Aunt Peg stepped away and let the Poodle stand naturally. The pose was more casual than those he’d be compared to, and slightly less eye-catching. Zeke already had the major and he wasn’t going to beat Tar for Best of Variety. So if Aunt Peg took the edge off his performance, making him look less like a star than he had in his own classes, nothing would be lost and much might be gained, especially if the judge could be convinced to put his sister up-over him for Best of Winners.

  Val Homberg had been around. She knew how the game was played, and she could count points every bit as well as we could. She took her time judging the three specials one by one, but when the time came to compare the two littermates, she simply walked to the back of the line and motioned Eve forward. She didn’t have to call us twice.

  Tar, who looked magnificent, every inch a champion and a worthy representative of the Poodle breed, was standing at the head of the line. I slipped Eve into the spot behind him. A champion bitch held the third position.

  Val Homberg sent us all around the ring one last time and pinned it just that way. Tar won Best of Variety, Eve was Best of Winners, the champion bitch was Best of Opposite Sex.

  Showing dogs is often an exercise in frustration. Most exhibitors lose more often than they win, and I was no exception. But a day like that was one to savor. Two major wins, a new champion, and BOV for Tar. In the dog show world, it simply didn’t get much better than that.

  18

  “Well,” said Aunt Peg, hopping Zeke up onto his table back at the setup. “We had ourselves quite a day.”

  We had indeed. Even though twenty minutes had passed since the Poodle classes had ended—we’d waited and had win pictures taken with the judge before making our way back to the grooming area to begin the process of taking the dogs’ elaborate hairdos apart—I was still feeling quite giddy with the excitement of it all.

  “I can’t believe it,” I said.

  “I can,” Terry announced from the other end of the aisle. The man had ears like a bat. “It was like watching the Cedar Crest show out there. None of the rest of us stood a chance.”

  Aunt Peg wasn’t having any of it. “So you lost in Standards, big deal. You got yours in Toys and Minis. Suck it up and act like a man.”

  “Oh please,” said Terry. “Are you ever barking up the wrong tree.”

  He gazed unhappily at the grooming tables in his setup, all holding Poodles that Crawford had shown earlier. Ea
ch now needed to be undone and rewrapped. The handler, as usual, had picked up another dog and headed back to the rings.

  A nicer person might have worked up a modicum of sympathy for Terry, but for me it just wasn’t happening. I knew how he felt; I’d been beaten by Crawford plenty of times in the past. Many more times, in fact, than I’d ever beaten him. But instead of feeling sorry for Terry, I was hosting my own private celebration.

  Eve, who should have been returned to her table as Zeke and Tar had been, was still on the floor. Taking advantage of the unaccustomed freedom, she’d chosen to dance rings around my legs. In less than a minute, we’d both become hopelessly entangled in the leather show lead. On a normal day, that would have been cause for great concern. The slender leash, twisting through a thick mane coat that had been hairsprayed into place, was bound to cause mats and tangles.

  Somehow I just couldn’t bring myself to care. I was standing there grinning like a happy fool when Sam came to the rescue.

  “Here, let me.” He took the looped end of the leash from my hand and began the convoluted process of trying to separate dog from handler, a task made all the more arduous by the fact that neither Eve nor I was unduly upset by our dilemma.

  “I have a homebred champion,” I said to no one in particular.

  “We know,” Aunt Peg replied. She watched with some amusement as Sam wound his hands first one way around my legs, then the other, trying to unravel the leather strip. Eve had stopped twirling now; there wasn’t enough play left for either of us to move. “Sad to say, you seem to have gone daft on account of it. I’d have to think back—it was many, many years ago—but I don’t think my first champion had that effect on me.”

  “Nor me,” said Sam, still working diligently.

  “I also have a Poodle with a new major,” I mentioned.

  “Hard to miss that.” Sam blew out a frustrated breath. “Since you seem to have attached her to your hip.”

  “Oh for Pete’s sake,” said Peg, watching Eve’s coat being twisted into tight knots.

  She reached into her tack box and pulled out a pair of sharp scissors. Holding Eve’s ear hair carefully to one side, Aunt Peg slipped one edge of the scissors under the collar and snipped. A quick tug and the constricting band snaked loose. Pressure released, the Poodle immediately stepped away and shook her head.

  Before Eve could think of what to do next, Aunt Peg had slipped a confining palm around her muzzle. She spun the Poodle in place. An experienced show-goer, Eve knew what was expected. With a movement that was half hoist, half jump, she bounded up onto her table.

  “I trust”—Peg aimed a fulminating look my way—“that you can deal with the rest of the problem.”

  “You cut my show leash,” I said in disbelief, holding up the snipped fragments as evidence. Now that there was nothing attached to the other end, the coil slid down my legs and pooled innocuously at my feet.

  “I did indeed. Somebody had to do something, considering that you were content to stand there looking like an idiot. Be glad I didn’t slap you. I considered that option as well.”

  Well, yes, I supposed that was something to be thankful for. Small favors and all that.

  Sam, damn him, was looking as though he was trying not to laugh.

  “Buck up, Melanie,” Peg said sternly. “Show leads are a dime a dozen. You can get another at the concession stand. You were entirely too happy for your own good.”

  Too happy for my own good? That was a new one. I glared at my ruined leash. “You’ve fixed that now, haven’t you? I’ll have you know that was my lucky show lead.”

  All right, in the same way that I don’t believe in jinxes, maybe I don’t set much store by lucky talismans either. But my aunt, the queen of high-handed tactics, needed to be taken down a notch. And considering that Eve had just been wearing that leash on the occasion of winning her first major, I figured I had a pretty good shot of making my case. Judging by Aunt Peg’s suddenly stricken look, I was probably right.

  “Oh dear,” she said.

  Sam was laughing in earnest now.

  Magically, Terry appeared at Aunt Peg’s side. He was drawn to trouble like a moth to a flame. I wondered why he was holding a stainless steel dog bowl in his hands. I didn’t have long to speculate.

  “I could throw a bowl of water over her if you like,” he offered.

  “You’re not helping,” I said.

  “What on earth makes you think I’m trying to be helpful?”

  There was that.

  “Okay,” said Sam, stepping in between us. “Back to your corners, everyone. We all have work to do.”

  “And some of us,” I said pointedly, “need to go shopping.”

  “Don’t be such a crybaby,” said Terry. “We must have twenty leashes in our tack box.” He walked back to his own setup, dug around in a drawer, and came up with a small plastic pouch holding a new black lead. “Catch,” he said, tossing it in my direction.

  I snatched it out of the air and examined the bag. The leash looked exactly like the one I’d just lost.

  “Not so fast,” said Aunt Peg. Now she was the one holding the tattered remnants of the sliced leash. “Maybe this one could be fixed. What if that one isn’t a lucky leash?”

  “Too bad.” I tossed it into my tack box. “Thanks, Terry.”

  “No prob.”

  “Yes, there’s a problem.” Aunt Peg was grinding her teeth now. She hated it when no one paid attention to her. Especially since it happened so seldom.

  And may I be the first to mention that in this particular instance it served her right?

  “Don’t worry,” Terry said blithely. “All our leads have major mojo. That’s why Crawford wins so much.”

  Sam was past laughing now; he sounded as though he might be choking. Thank goodness Crawford hadn’t been there to hear that assertion. I doubted any of us would have survived the fallout. And although I was quite certain Terry hadn’t meant for us to take him seriously, Aunt Peg seemed to be considering it. She retrieved the leash from my tack box and gave it a look.

  “Major mojo,” she said. “That might make a good name for a Standard Poodle. I’ll have to give it some thought.”

  There was still an hour to wait before the start of the non-sporting group. In the interim, Eve and Zeke were brushed out, rewrapped and—after all four Poodles had gone outside for a long walk—put back in their crates. Tar, who would be showing again in the group, rested atop his table where his hair wouldn’t get mussed.

  The Poodles had been to enough shows to know the routine. Once crated, Faith and the littermates immediately flopped over on their sides and went to sleep. Tar, knowing he couldn’t relax just yet, kept a watchful and curious eye on the activity in the surrounding area. The big black Poodle was the first to spot the slender, middle-aged woman making her way purposefully through the crowds and heading in our direction.

  Sam had gone to get lunch while Aunt Peg and I held down the fort. As I scanned the crowds waiting for his return, my gaze, too, fastened on the woman that had caught Tar’s eye.

  The dog show world is actually a rather small community. Exhibit enough and after a while everyone begins to look at least somewhat familiar. I couldn’t remember seeing this woman before, though.

  Dressed in a workmanlike suit—skirt loose enough to run in, jacket with plenty of pockets for holding brushes and bait, and all in a dark, murky plaid that wouldn’t show the dirt—she bore the same look as any number of exhibitors on the grounds. As she drew near, a gold pin fastened to her lapel and winking in the overhead lights, announced her breed affiliation: Goldens. I was about to point her out to Aunt Peg, who was rooting around in her bag for a granola bar, when the woman announced herself.

  “Finally!” she said, skirting expertly around the last row of crates and wending her way through the tables to our setup. “I knew if I kept looking, I’d find you sooner or later.”

  Aunt Peg straightened and immediately smiled. “Cindy! I’m so glad you
made it. Let me introduce my niece, Melanie.”

  Cindy turned out to be Cindy Marshall, Pepper’s breeder from New Jersey. The mention of her name reminded me that the two women had been planning to have lunch together at the end of the week. I’d forgotten to ask how that had gone.

  “I had to cancel,” Cindy said when I asked. “Something came up at the last minute. Isn’t that always the way? But then Peg said she was going to be showing here, and I was entered, too. I’d told her if I got a free moment, I’d stop by and say hello.”

  To nobody’s surprise, the talk turned immediately to dogs. Peg and Pepper’s breeder didn’t know one another well, but once they started discussing the day’s activities, they became as chummy as a pair of old friends. Cindy leaned down, peeking inside the crates to say hello to Faith, Eve, and Zeke, then greeted Tar with the utmost care.

  “I won’t even touch,” she said with a little laugh. “I’ve been around dogs my whole life but it’s hard not to be intimidated by all that hair. I don’t know how you Poodle people do it.”

  “It’s not so bad once you get the hang of it,” Peg replied. “I can’t imagine coping with shedding.”

  She walked over to Tar and placed a hand on his flank where the hair had been shaved to the skin. “Right now, when he’s all sprayed up and waiting to go back in, you want to confine your patting to the clipped areas. Later, when he’s done, you just treat him like any other normal dog. That’s all they are, really. The hair is just a giant sleight of hand.

  “It’s one thing for you to be reticent about it; you’re trying to be polite. But there’s nothing more annoying than a judge who doesn’t want to put his hands down inside the coat. How on earth do they expect to feel what the exhibitor is trying to hide? If a judge can’t deal with hair, they should only be doing breeds they can eyeball.”