It took us quite a while to find her. We had been looking for a couple of years when old friends from the show world had a new litter. Ginger and Jack were the mom and pop, Jack being Ashley’s old rival and Gulliver’s grandfather—in a twist typical of modern dog genetics, it was ironic that we might now take a puppy from a litter Jack had sired. He was used so frequently in breeding programs that he had become a legendary force, even though he had died several years before. Anyone who wanted to use him now had to work with frozen semen and artificial insemination. Ginger, who belonged to our old friends, Michele and Tom Wrath, had been a big winner, with many Group and Best in Specialty Show wins to her name. All in all, it was a stellar pedigree.
Dawn’s house was already crowded with her three dogs, but she was ready for a new show prospect to handle. She asked me if I was interested in co-owning a girl who could live with me, while she took responsibility for the ring. I hesitated a little, wondering if I wanted to give away the right to show, but ultimately decided that with our sailing schedule, perhaps I would be more comfortable having someone else take the main chance. And it didn’t hurt that she was, flat-out, a better handler than I could ever hope to be. We had renewed a friendship that had gone quiet during the years of my illness and returned to laughing once again.
Several years before, Michele and Tom had moved to the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina, but we hadn’t lost touch, even though our contact was now mainly at the National, during Michele’s trips back West for work, or at Christmastime when they came back to visit family. Dawn and I flew east to visit them and the pups. Some of my friends poked fun at me for traveling so far just to look at a puppy, but it didn’t seem so far to Dawn and me. Perhaps there never is a location too far to go to for a good show prospect or a great dog. Some people even import their Dals from England, where there is a lot of interest and activity in the breed. We didn’t know whether there would be a puppy we might want, but Dawn had been on Michele’s list for quite a long time and thus had the first pick, after Michele chose the one she wanted to keep. North Carolina in April was beautiful. The flowering trees were just beginning to bloom pink and white, and the days were warm and sunny. We stayed for a long weekend, reveling in the weather and the new black-and-white spots.
The pups, at six weeks, were rambunctious and ready to be evaluated. We put them up on the grooming table, which made a nice, stable platform on which to stack them and set their little legs out in the square show stance. The entire litter stood up proudly and was just plain lovely. It was hard even to decide which one was first pick. We were looking for a female, with beautiful markings, a good top line—and a pretty face. I was a sucker for a pretty face.
Sometimes the head swayed me so much that I found it hard to look at other qualities, and that wasn’t good. Dals are not judged for their heads, the head being only 10 points on a scale of 100, but it was always this that spoke to me—the beautifully sculpted triangular shape, the strong muzzle tipped with a moist black nose, the luminous and intelligent eyes, all of it set off by the frame of silky ears that dropped nearly to the jawline.
It was hard to judge movement at this stage, but top line, rear angulation, and shoulder layback foretold a lot about how it would develop as the months passed. As we snapped photo after photo of the puppies, talking to each other and comparing notes, we were like persnickety women sorting through sales racks in a high-end department store.
Though Dawn and I were to co-own the puppy—just as I had once done with Pat and John—Dawn let me have the final decision about which pup to choose because she would live with me. Eventually I decided on the green rickracked girl with the best markings and the prettiest head. The structure in most of the pups was so good that I was able to make my pick based mostly on cosmetics, which came as a big relief. It was like eating a whole box of chocolate truffles. I left feeling sinfully overstuffed.
She wasn’t ready to go home on an airplane yet, and Dawn would be traveling nearby when she was a few weeks older, so we left her behind as we departed from North Carolina. Brad and I had begun batting names around over the phone as soon as I had settled on Green, and we decided before Dawn and I even got on the plane that she would be SunnyOaks Saint Florian Literati’s Compass Rose. We had to use three kennel names because Dawn and I were co-owning, and the breeder of the litter always has his or her name come first.
Brad and I had picked the name Compass Rose because we wanted something that related to sailing, and the compass rose is a figure used on maps to display the orientation of the four cardinal directions—north, south, east, west—and the way the wind is blowing. It is usually drawn in several beautiful colors and seemed perfect for a dog we expected to be perfect. We gave her the call name Breeze, which fit with the show name so well.
Once I was back home, Brad and I felt elated as we contemplated Breeze’s arrival, and yet we were also worried. Would Gulliver accept a new dog, even if that dog were a female puppy?
The three weeks passed like glue dripping from a bottle, but at last it was time for Breeze’s arrival. One evening after work, we drove down to Dawn’s to pick her up. Apparently she had been quiet and good in the cabin of the plane, where she was allowed to travel because she was a small dog. The flight attendants just couldn’t stop cooing over her, as if she were a new baby—which she was! I marveled at the heft of her as I cuddled her in my arms, already so much heavier than only a few weeks before. New-puppy scent flooded my nose as she reached up to wash my face with her little pink tongue.
What was most striking about her at this stage was her face: her eyes had heavy mascara in a thick black rim, and the markings circling each eye flowed downward in a perfectly symmetrical triangle of pigment. There was a great deal of beauty in such harmony. With her white forehead and black ears, her face looked at bit like that of a harlequin clown. Her eyes themselves were of the darkest brown, though one of them had developed a tiny white fleck in it, which gave Dawn and me a flip of concern. A blue eye was not good, and though this wasn’t blue, a fleck was a fleck, and there was nothing we could do about it except cross our fingers that the judges didn’t nick us for it.
Back at our house, even though it was dark, Brad set Breeze gently down on the driveway, on leash, and waited for me to unlock the door and loose the beast. Gulliver was just plain excited to see us, the way he always was whenever we returned from being out, so even as I clipped on his lead, he was trying to scramble from his crate across the hardwood, raring to go and figure out why Brad was still outside. I held my breath, and my chest felt tight. He dragged me outside and charged across the pavement, then stopped short. After a moment, he approached, surprisingly tentatively.
He sniffed her butt.
He sniffed her nose.
He sniffed her ears.
Then he rubbed his muzzle along the length of her, as if claiming her for his very own prize. Apparently it was settled. Gulliver approved, and we could bring her inside. Breeze was officially part of the family.
We couldn’t know it then, but Breeze would become like a sister to Gulliver, despite the difference in their ages. We were enlarging our family, and they were related, too, because they were cousins of a sort. But they grew closer than that, and when she came into his life, he at last learned to play. Perhaps lack of it was due to all those years of living as a single dog and not having anyone to bounce around with, but now he took to it with surprising vigor considering his eleven years.
He wasn’t able to really keep up with her as she grew, but he learned a variety of clever ways that enabled them to cavort around the house together. Lying on the floor, he used the grip of his jaws and teeth to play tug, rather than the strength of his legs. Because he couldn’t chase her from room to room, they developed a wacky game where she hid behind the back of the family room couch and ran back and forth, popping out from either end to surprise him where he stood with his back to the TV, swaying to the sound of her rhythm because he couldn’t see her. It was a k
ind of stationary hide-and-seek, and both Brad and I felt absurdly pleased that he had invented it.
Gulliver didn’t even get territorial about his food and ignored her when she came up to investigate his breakfast or dinner bowl, or sometimes even stepped aside to let her polish the dish after he had finished. In general, he looked very happy to have her as part of the family and spent a lot of time cuddled up with her on his bed or on the couch. It was a lesson in how even a Dal could change his spots.
Breeze was a sweet little girl who loved to snuggle with Brad as he watched television in the family room, while Gulliver went with me to the bedroom, where he reclined like a pasha among the pillows. As she grew, Brad taught her to jump up in the air for a toy—any toy—and jump she did. High. Higher. Highest. When we showed off her aerial skills, people would marvel at the heights Breeze achieved with her acrobatic body. She loved to chase a football down the steep hill to my office and grew protective of it.
Over time, we began to call Breeze “The Circle Girl” because she ran in tight little circles as she waited for her food dish, or laps around the dining room table as she trotted out to the kitchen in the morning while Gulliver was sacking me from behind, or even in the limited space of her crate when she was waiting to make a speedy exit. Each night before bed, she snuggled in her own chair, and when I came to say good night, she stood up and ground her head down in the cushion, hard, an action we began to call a “head butt.” Then she would flip on her belly for a vigorous scratch, moaning all the while. Sometime after she first came to us, I described this odd behavior to another breeder, who told me that her bitch out of Jack did the same thing, and that it was a trait they had inherited from their father.
However, Breeze had one nasty habit. As she began to grow up, she decided that she hated rain, even if it was only a light patter, or even if she had on her little red raincoat with the hood. (My mother was moaning from her grave about “dog’s dignity.”) We didn’t have to walk her because of the big back yard and so didn’t realize that she thought of herself as too “delicate” to brave the elements. She hid under the eaves of the garage and came back in shaking off as if she had been in a downpour.
Once safely in the house, she would saunter about innocently, and then slide out through the dining room door, secretively and thus unnoticed, and make her deposit in the same place each time: between the back of one of the living room armchairs and the wall, on my grandmother’s treasured Persian rug. Only when I smelled something suspicious while passing through the living room on the way to the kitchen or bedroom, with the scent wafting through the air as did the Stars and Stripes on the wind, did I realize she’d been at it again. And so we developed a new nickname for her—The Sneaky Pooper. And unfortunately, we had plenty of occasions to use it. The rainy season in Northern California was long.
Per the norm in our home, the nicknames began to pile up: Miss Breeze, Breezer, Beezer, Beeze, BZ, Sweet Girl, Ms. Breezealot, Breeze Louise, Bright Eyes, and later on, Little Mama. Never Breezy, which Dawn’s son had informed us meant “a loose woman.” Brad developed a routine every night to entice her up onto the sofa: “Who’s my good girl?” he’d croon. “Who’s my pretty girl?” And he’d clap his hands together, and up she would leap to lick his ear enthusiastically, before settling in comfortably, with her head draped over his lap.
At six months, Breeze was ready to be shown, and Dawn took great pleasure in it. Finishing her championship handily, Breeze began to win as a special, and never really stopped. For a while, she and her sister, who lived in our area, dueled over Best in Breed, but eventually Breeze matured, and when she did, she often took the blue ribbon. In 2012, at the Golden Gate show where I had first sold Rhiannon’s puppies via the poster on the back wall of the bench, I actually handled Breeze to a much-coveted Group placement among mostly professional handlers and some of the best dogs in other breeds in the United States, after Dawn had won Best of Breed with her and then had to leave for a wedding.
Breeze still continued to get beaten by the males because for some inexplicable reason they were often favored by the judges, and also because she had turned out to be petite. A big flashy dog had it over her many times, even though she could be more correct for type. In general, I was happy to sit on the sidelines and watch Dawn fly around the ring with our girl. She looked like a pro, and so did Breeze. However, that excursion into the ring at Golden Gate made me realize that I did indeed miss the pulse of competition.
I thought about starting Breeze in obedience, but as she matured, she became strikingly independent, so I began to work her in Rally instead. In Rally, the handler teams up with the dog in a much less strict set of patterns than obedience, and while it could be as refined a skill, it didn’t require the same exacting precision that obedience does. And part of my reluctance to tackle her CD was that I still remembered Rhiannon with such sadness, despite the many years that had gone by.
AKC had established a new title for the conformation ring, Grand Champion, and Dawn and I decided to go for it with Breeze, who was by then able to put the title CH (champion) preceding her show name. Grand Champion was harder to achieve than the previous one had been, but it didn’t take Breeze long to accumulate the necessary points and majors, and soon we were using the abbreviation GCH (grand champion) for her. Just as, in another era, we would have hung our kids’ new report cards on the refrigerator, after a while, another plaque hung on our dogs’ accomplishment wall. And when she first came into season at nine months, Gulliver was very pleased, mounting her and humping away as if he were a young dog who had never been altered. His spirit was still intact.
•••
When Brad and I at last decided to get married on September 19, 2009, after nine years of living together, we chose a site high in the Santa Cruz Mountains, a venue that was both beautiful and whimsical. Set on acres of naturally wild and yet groomed grounds, it had all sorts of playful touches: a miniature cottage with pint-size wooden tables and chairs made for kids and reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland; a small train for adults that ran from the top of the site down the steep hill to where the ceremony would be held; a renovated barn, lit golden with many candles, where dancing and cake-cutting and toasts would take place later in the evening. Dinner tables were set up beside a pond fringed with ferns and populated by mallards, and wild purple irises grew in profusion through the shallows.
Gulliver and Breeze were our ring bearers, with small velvet pillows sewn onto their collars to hold fake rings—just in case they should get away from us and take off down the steep hill where we would exchange our somewhat-eclectic vows. It wouldn’t have seemed right to have a ceremony without the participation of both dogs. Encircling their necks were wreaths of coral and white lilies, in tune with the colors I had chosen for the event. Led by Nathaniel and Gabe, they went eagerly down the aisle, with Gulliver straining hard at the leash as if he couldn’t wait to get to my side.
How my life had changed. With the depression banished, I was finally able to make a commitment to the man I had grown to love. Jim was married to the woman he had left me for and was at last gone from my inner emotional life, though we remained friends and saw each other occasionally with pleasure. The kids still tied us together: family died hard, and when it was he and his new wife’s turn to get a dog, they turned to me to visit different golden retriever breeders with them. Once again we were the friends we’d been so many years before.
Unlike the simple ivory dress I had worn at my first wedding, this time I had picked a long white gown with a train and a full-length veil. All this was a symbol of the ways in which I was starting over again. A white dress not for the purity of my virtue, but for the pure joy of life refreshed.
Dawn and Myrna stood up for me as matron of honor and bridesmaid. At my age of fifty-four, some people might have raised their eyebrows at the elaborate event I had planned, but I didn’t care. I felt certain of all these choices and took pleasure in arranging them.
We held the
ceremony under a wisteria pergola that faced a small lake, where a bullfrog serenaded us as we made our vows. Over our heads a thick stand of redwood trees soared one hundred feet high, to form the sort of chapel only nature can create. We had reserved two empty chairs—one for each of our mothers—where Brad’s sister laid two roses. My mother had been gone for thirty-five years, but on a day like this, I missed her. The quiet music of a harpist floated out into the still air, playing classical pieces I had chosen.
Brad and I faced each other beneath the wooden arch of wisteria decorated with coral and silver balloons, adding a lighthearted note that let our guests know that we didn’t take ourselves too seriously. We followed a ceremony I had written from scratch, borrowing from both Christian and Jewish worlds, as well as the Native American Indian. At its center was an Old Navajo tradition I had discovered in my research for our union, which welcomed in the life-giving winds of north, south, east, and west to bless the new hearth and home being created in this quiet moment. We interwove our cupped hands one atop the other: right, left, right, left.
As each stanza ushered in a new wind, one of our children came up beside us to lay a long satin ribbon of coral or silver over our wrists. They all promised to support us, and one another, throughout the coming years, and with that, the minister tied the four ribbons into a knot around our hands. The dogs sat patiently by our sides, just the way they waited in the morning at the breakfast table or at night, hoping for table scraps.
When it came time for the kiss and the final processional, Gulliver was not able to walk up the long hill back to the reception’s location, next to another pond. And so he was transported on the little train, Breeze by his side, to be taken home for his supper. He had begun to falter, just a bit. I did not want to admit that he had aged, his muzzle getting grayer, incontinence becoming more of a problem, his inability to get up on the couch or bed without serious assistance worsening. Nevertheless, he was together with us, despite these limitations. Brad continued to remind me, gently, of his age and his infirmities, pressing me to prepare for what was inevitably to come.
Bespotted: My Family's Love Affair With Thirty-Eight Dalmatians Page 13
