by Jerold Last
She continued scratching Juliet’s head absentmindedly. “No, not really. It felt more like a man, but I’m not sure.”
I decided we had to treat this episode like a real threat, just in case it was. “I’m sorry you had to have this happen, especially with me not here to help. If there’s a next time, why don’t you try talking to the caller to try to maybe get an idea of whether it’s a man or woman on the other end of the line. In the meantime, do you want me to report this to the police?”
“No. I really haven’t any reason to think a crime has been committed. But I do appreciate you taking me seriously rather than just blowing off my concerns, Roger.” Which earned me a hug and a kiss.
Chapter11.The next dog shows
Two weeks later Bruce and I were at the Yolo County Fairgrounds in Woodland, CA, about fifteen miles north of Sacramento on Interstate 5. It was another sprawling venue of several hundred acres, at the south end of the small city with more than 50,000 residents. We were here with Juliet to compete in the next two shows on the Circuit, which would be sponsored by the Santa Clara Kennel Club on Saturday and the Camelia Capital Kennel Club on Sunday.
Sherry had invited us to stay with her over the weekend. Her house was on a 1-acre lot in an old neighborhood in a Sacramento suburb called Carmichael. The area was still zoned for horse owners to be able to keep their animals on the property. In the backyard, several shorthairs romped on a not so well kept lawn on top of dirt. A few large mature trees, accompanied by some native shrubs that should have been low maintenance, provided a bit of shade for the dog pack. Pride of place among the larger old trees was a huge American walnut standing about 60 feet high and perhaps 40 feet across at the widest part of the canopy. Dog runs with cyclone fencing and concrete pads backed up to the house, with dog doors opening into a large doggy rumpus room inside the house.
The house itself was old, about 1600 square feet of living area in a ranch style, one story building painted light green with dark green shutters on the windows. There were three bedrooms and two bathrooms, plenty of space for guests like us to stay. Everything the dogs had access to, or could get into, needed a little repair and maintenance, as might be expected for a single woman like Sherry who had to travel a lot for her job.
Juliet was in high spirits after visiting with several canine buddies, including her mother and grandmother, at Sherry's house. The dogs were all shorthairs, and all of the girls looked a lot like Juliet as far as size and shape. Paint jobs differed between them, so you could tell them apart.
Bruce had spent a fair amount of time practicing stacking and moving with Juliet. He had some questions for Sherry about the specifics of how best to present her to the judge. He, Juliet, and Sherry spent some time together in the back yard Friday evening before dinner, working out some nuances of handling, with me watching as a spectator. There was a small fenced off area with the typical dimensions of a small show ring, where most of the green grass still remaining in the yard grew. They worked in this ring, mostly on Bruce’s handling interactions with Juliet, with Sherry playing the role of the judge.
“We discussed all of this in general terms at the Stockton show. Forgive me if I repeat myself here, but you’re ready for the details now. It’s all about making it fun for Juliet so she sparkles. You’re a little too much into the obedience part for a bitch like her. One of her prettiest features is her free stack. You want her to stack herself for the judge. When you bring her into position in front of the judge, grab her attention with a dog treat, slowing her down a few steps before you reach the judge. Then trust her to do the right thing. She already knows how to step into a perfect stack, but if she arrives off balance give her a “step” command and shift your weight to encourage her to take another step and readjust herself. Hold your bait at her nose height to keep her head in the right position. Just tempt her with it; you don’t have to give it to her yet. After the judge looks at her you can reward her with the bait and your praise. When you move her, it’s important to keep her attitude up. Moving is fun and a reward in itself. Don’t make it into a discipline.”
Sherry explained the rationale, "As you know, Bruce, no dog is perfect, even Juliet. Much of the handler's skill in the show ring comes in being able to emphasize her best features while hiding or minimizing the flaws. That's especially true when you stack her for the judge's inspection, which you do very well. But it's also true at all times in the show ring when the judge isn't looking at her. You have a tendency to let her relax while the other dogs are being examined. A good handler assumes the judge may look up at any time to check her while they’re examining another dog. You need to always keep her stacked to show her best features, just in case.
“Juliet has a great front end----chest, shoulders, keel, and head---that's what you want the judge to notice if he looks over toward her casually. Keep track of where the judge is and make sure he will always see her from the perspective you want him to. This means continually changing the angle of how she is standing, in subtle ways, as the judge moves along the line of bitches in front of her.
"When the judge has you move her around the ring you can choose your speed and the length of your stride. Juliet moves beautifully if you can get her up to a quicker speed. You might want to try taking longer strides yourself and going a bit faster when you're running her around the perimeter of the ring. Then just let her flow. The more you make her reach out with her front legs to keep up with you, the better she'll look. When you're moving out and back, the same principles are in play, but try keeping her a little closer to you by shortening the lead a bit. That will make her look better going out and exaggerate her reach coming back."
We went through a second orientation at the fairgrounds with Sherry the next morning. Sherry pointed out the early Christmas mood. The ringside area reserved for taking photos of the winning dogs, their handlers, and owners contained a photo backdrop of Santa driving a facsimile of his sleigh. Bruce and I were both welcomed by our respective peer groups, handlers and owners, noticeably more enthusiastically than at the previous shows in Stockton. It was a good sign we were making some progress with selling ourselves in our undercover identities. Even better, Juliet and Bruce picked up three select points, even though she wasn’t chosen as "Best of Breed". Obviously Bruce was incorporating some of the subtler handling tricks Sherry had taught him to best present this specific breed and this specific bitch in the show ring.
Several of the owners we had seen previously in Stockton made it a point to come over and congratulate Bruce and me on Juliet’s earning three points. One couple, the Breeds, who owned that day’s “Best of Breed” Winner Bitch, invited us to join them for a drink after the Best in Show competition was over. “Meet us over at the RV parking area when you’ve watched enough of the show to be happy,” invited Steven Breed.
Lunch was an excuse to see a bit of what Woodland was like. We drove north on East Street to a Mexican restaurant someone suggested, which was supposed to be famous for its chiles rellenos. The ambiance was blah, the stuffed chiles very, very good, and the cold Dos Equis beer was a good pairing for Pasilla peppers stuffed with cheese. Traditional beans, tortillas, rice, chips and salsa rounded out the lunch. The whole meal cost less than half of what the same lunch would have cost at home in Century City or Westwood, where the ambiance would have been fancier.
We watched other handlers with other breeds in the afternoon. After the last event Sherry came over to congratulate Bruce. "You handled her very nicely today. She looked like she was gliding around the ring when you moved her out. Even more importantly, she looked like she was having fun out there. It was like she was shouting, albeit discretely, “Look at me, look at me!” I loved watching both of you in the ring."
Chapter12.Meeting the owners
The other handlers' congratulations that Bruce received after he showed Juliet seemed sincere. Several of the owners in addition to the Breeds offered to buy me a drink. The post-show party seemed to be a good place to begin my
real job, so after the show I walked back to the parking area where Helen and Steven Breed were waiting for me. They led me to a huge and expensive RV parked in a cluster of recreational vehicles of all shapes and sizes. I was welcomed inside, shown a well-stocked bar, and asked what my usual drink of preference was.
A quick look at the bar told me the right answer included only booze or liquor. "Scotch if you have it."
"Blended or single malt?"
The Breeds seemed to be affluent, as did many of the dog owners we had met thus far. I assumed the RV cost more than $250,000, all tricked out as it was. "Single malt, please."
So there I was sipping on some excellent and well-aged Glenlivet, making small talk with the Breeds. Since Sherry had warned me that gossip was the major activity among the owners and breeders after the dog shows, I was careful with my answers. Whatever I said now would be the cover story we’d have to live with for the rest of this case. Mostly I explained that Juliet was now our dog for the foreseeable future and would be living in Los Angeles with me and my family, that we had our own handler, and that our goal was to show her to a Grand Champion title or beyond, campaigning her aggressively throughout the west coast circuit. We had a short visit, but a productive one. I was able to plant some of the seeds that over time would blossom into our image among the owners.
Two RVs over were the Schlecks, another GSP family. Their champion male Max was sitting in an exercise pen alongside their RV, like a lighthouse beacon beckoning me to my next Port of Call. It turned out to be easy. Max offered his head and ears for scratching as I passed by. Less than half a minute later, we were best friends. A middle-aged woman, stylishly dressed like a handler, opened the RV door, took a single step down onto the second stair, and said hello to me in a booming voice. We introduced ourselves to each other, then Ingrid introduced me formally to Max, while hollering into the RV for her husband Howard to join us. Howard, who was dressed more casually than Ingrid, shook my hand while introducing himself, and asked which dog was mine. When I told him we now had Sherry Wyne’s Juliet, I was welcomed effusively into the club with the offer of another drink, which I refused on grounds of already reaching my capacity two RVs back.
Howard leaned towards me and continued talking. "You know that our Max and your Juliet used to take turns going 'Best of Winners' until they both finished their championships. These days the Grand Champion points seem to be hard to come by for both of them. Who'll be handling Juliet now that you're backing her? Will it still be Sherry or will the new handler we saw today be showing her now?"
I told him the answer as if it was top secret, being shared only with him, assuming that would most encourage everyone in Yolo County knowing this information in the shortest time possible. "No, we'll use our own handler, a gentleman named Bruce. We hope he'll be able to break Juliet's slump even though he’s new to this circuit. He's new to showing GSPs too, but has a lot of experience with some of the other sporting breeds."
Howard answered quite naturally, "Ingrid has been showing Max since he was a puppy. We think showing him ourselves is the most fun part of competing in one of these shows. But I'll admit it's a lot easier to get those points with a professional handler; a lot of the judges give the wins to the wrong end of the leash if you ask me. It's supposed to be about which is the best dog in the ring, not which handler is the most popular or most winning."
We both looked over towards Ingrid, who spoke to me directly. “A bunch of us were planning to barbecue dinner on my gas grill tonight between a couple of the RVs. Would you like to join us and meet the rest of the Shorthair owners who are staying on the grounds? You’re welcome to bring a pertinent other or friend along if you’d like.”
This was going more easily than I had anticipated. There wasn’t anything wrong with that! “Sure, I’d love to. What can I bring?”
Ingrid looked over at Howard and some kind of nonverbal signal passed between them. “If you’d like to bring a couple of bottles of red wine to share, we’ll supply everything else. I’ve got all sorts of steaks and sausages to barbecue and the other guests will be bringing side dishes and desserts. Why don’t you come by around 5 or 5:30, when it’s starting to get dark around here?”
It wasn't clear to me how much of a class structure might exist between owners and professional handlers, but I thought "To heck with it," and brought Bruce. I had also bought three bottles of a nice Cabernet Sauvignon wine from the Napa Valley at the local wine and liquor store a few blocks walk on East Street from the fairgrounds to bring with us to the barbeque. There were several people there already, including the Breeds and the Schlecks who I already knew. I introduced Bruce to both couples and left the wine with my hosts, who thanked me and opened one of the bottles to pour glasses for us.
"You're spoiling us," joked Howard Schleck. "That's the first cork I've seen on a wine bottle since the show circuit began. We usually see cardboard cartons and screw caps around here."
Bruce and I wandered around and met the other owners. There were three married couples and one couple who were bonded by their mutual love of dogs rather than to each other. They were all regulars on the circuit, part of the RV crowd who stayed on the show grounds. Melanie and Irwin Todd were from Southern California, near Riverside, where they had retired several years previously. Both of them were in their 60s, owned and showed Labrador retrievers, and had done well today in the show ring. They were friendly, but with different breeds and different life styles we really had little in common and used up the pleasantries in a few minutes.
We approached the next couple, another pair in their 60s that had picked up a couple of plastic cups of the wine we had brought and complimented us on our taste in Cabs. "I'm Albert Schaefer and this purty little thang is my wife Sadie. We're dove hunters from West Texas and are regulars with our Brittanies on this little circuit every year. What kind of dogs do you folks have?"
We chatted a while about Shorthairs versus Brittanies, with Bruce dominating our half of the conversation. He continued to amaze me with his depth and breadth of knowledge about all things dog. Bruce is not large, at 5 foot 9 inches and about 170 pounds, but with lightning-quick fast twitch muscles he moves as fast and gracefully as a German Shorthair. He can be noticed in a group or blend into it, as he prefers, by adjusting his sometimes dramatically flamboyant personality.
Albert sipped some wine and turned to Bruce. "There's more than a few gay owners and handlers on this dog show circuit, including some of our best. Out here in California you should be comfortable wherever you go. I think you might still need to keep a low profile in West Texas, though. There's a lot less toleration in the Bible Belt.”
The gossip mill worked remarkably well around here. My cover story had gotten from the Breeds through the party in record time. Bruce was the center of most of the attention. "What's your story? How did you become a handler? And are you really a Nanny for Roger's kid, too?"
"I grew up as a cheesehead, in a small town in rural Wisconsin, which I couldn't wait to leave. Fort Atkinson was a pretty conservative town and by then I pretty much knew my gender orientation. I decided to join the Navy and see the world. Nobody in the Navy seemed to be worried about my sexual orientation. My job description included training our guard dogs and keeping them in good physical condition as needed for our squad. I did my job well, so my squad all liked me, and vice-versa. I was also able to show dogs on the European circuit for some of the officers. But between being pretty obviously gay and lacking a college degree, I knew I wouldn’t get much beyond the rank I held. After a while, I'd spent enough time and seen enough killing in deserts and jungles that I was ready for something else.”
Bruce took several sips of his wine before he continued. "After my second hitch ended, I went home to Fort Atkinson and applied for a job as a cop. Nobody ever said anything about my sexual preferences, but the local police force and the state patrol kept hiring the other applicants for the positions available. I spent a couple of months living off my mustering o
ut pay from the Navy and reconnecting with my extended family. I started to notice the social awkwardness whenever we went anywhere together. I finally got the message and thought some more about my career choices.
He finished the rest of the wine left in his cup. "I like kids and dogs. So I thought about jobs, lifestyle, kids, and what I was actually qualified to do. Being a Nanny in a big city like Los Angeles, which has a lot of tolerance for diversity, seemed to fit perfectly with my personality, at least for now. I spent most of the rest of my savings on an intensive, 3-month icourse at a Nanny school in West Hollywood, where I received my credentials as a certified Nanny. Roger's family is my first full-time, live-in Nanny experience. I really enjoy the job and the family. The pay is great, and now that we have Juliet the travel is a bonus."
We talked a bit longer with the Schaefers, about their life on the dog show circuit, and what it was like to live in an RV for several months with a lot of dogs. Like the Schlecks, they were also owner-breeders who didn't use a professional handler. Sadie summed up how the RV had been customized with people and dog space. “As much as we love our dogs, we need our own space and the RV is purty tiny after a while. We also need to keep the dogs safe when we’re outa here or drivin’ 70 miles per hour. So we had this here mobile home customized. We took out a section of seatin’ and bolted a pile of dog crates to the walls and floor, so they don’t slide around. The dogs like this set-up, except the old girl who puts up a fuss unless she gets to ride on the dashboard and help steer.”
