Black Ribbon

by Susan Conant

  But this is a story about how things were, not about how they should have been. In what was probably a nasty tone of voice, I said, “High in Tail? You’re not calling the catalog that, are you?”

  “It’s my name,” Eva said. “It’s what I use.”

  “Well, I don’t think that’s very fair to High In Trial.”

  “My catalog’s not like theirs. It’s nothing like theirs. They aren’t going to mind. You’ll see. I’ve got a lot of good stuff lined up. New. Not like what everyone else has.” After that, Eva tried to worm my address out of me. It seemed to me that she almost tried to buy it. Her exact words were: Ten percent off for my friends. So I told her that she could send me anything she wanted in care of Dog’s Life. As I didn’t tell her, I failed to understand why she’d want to bother, because there were scads of kennel supply and dog training businesses all over the country, and the existence of hers wasn’t going to merit so much as a sentence in my column. I want to admit, though, that my response was petty. Stupid, too. If you’re in dogs, your address is no secret. Whenever you enter your dog in a show, your name and address appear at the back of the show catalog. Furthermore, dog people are dedicated joiners. I, for example, belonged not only to a great many clubs in which I had an obvious personal interest—my obedience clubs, our national breed club, the Dog Writers’ Association of America, the Alaskan Malamute Protection League—but to numerous others, including two organizations for fanciers of breeds I’d never even owned … or not yet, anyway. Dog sources failing her, Eva could have looked me up in the Cambridge phone directory. But would I give her my home address? No. So you see? A forkful of pot roast or a lump of lobster in her face might have been a kinder blackball than the one I hurled.

  That was the choice, supposedly, anyway. Some choice, pot roast or lobster Newburg, except that whereas everything else was self-serve, the lobster, if you could call it that, was doled out onto toast triangles by an unfortunate and probably generous-hearted young fellow stationed behind an industrial-size chafing dish containing liquified cheese so free of trayf that a Hasidic rabbi could have lapped it up in good conscience.

  The Orthodoxy of the dish did, however, enable me to escape from Eva Spitteler, who lingered in fierce dispute with the cheese-sauce server while I fled. Hailed by Maxine, I had the good fortune to end up at her table with the VIP’s—Eric Grimaldi, Phyllis and Don Abbott, Sara, Heather, Cam, and Ginny. Eric was, of course, a Sporting Group judge; Phyllis, an obedience judge; Ginny, a tracking judge. Sara and Heather were extremely well known in agility. Cam was there partly because she was married to John R.B., an emerging AKC pooh-bah in his own right and the son of the legendary R.B., and partly because she wrote her column, showed a lot, won a lot, and knew a great many people, most of whom liked her and respected her judgment. I was there as a representative of Dog’s Life, thus as the recipient of the courtesy owed to my employer, and as a stand-in for my editor, Bonnie, who was too good a friend of Max’s to publish anything really negative I might write about Waggin’ Tail, anyway. Bonnie, however, couldn’t spice up my article with the authentic zing of first-person enthusiasm that my inclusion among the notables was probably meant to inspire.

  My luck, though, consisted less of finding myself in elevated company than in discovering myself protected from the food-griping that would dominate the conversation everywhere else in the dining room of Waggin’ Tail. Not that dog people are picky eaters. Far from it. The food at most dog shows makes lunch at the typical American high school cafeteria taste like a banquet at the Tour d’Argent. But we do want value for money. A few bucks for a plastic-encased ultrasoggy tuna on dry-roasted cardboard was one thing; gourmet-crustacean prices for Welsh rarebit were quite another. My position at the VIP table had another bonus, or so I imagined: Since my place was the last vacant one, there was no way I could end up having to endure yet more of Eva Spitteler, or so I was assuring myself when an unseen force slamming against the back of my chair sent me lurching forward so hard that my solar plexus collided with the edge of the table.

  “Hey, sorry about that!” The voice drowned out my involuntary moan. “You wanna move so I can get in here?”

  I’d been right: Eva and I wouldn’t be at the same table. Instead, we’d be back to back.

  “Shit!” Eva exclaimed. “Shit! You guys got real lobster! I’m going back.” And away she stomped.

  Across the table from me, Maxine blithely raised her fork toward her mouth. “Just ignore her!” Balanced on the tines of Max’s fork was what my Maine-bred eye identified as a chunk of tail meat. “She has done nothing but complain about everyone and everything. Some people are never satisfied.”

  Phyllis Abbott, who was seated to my immediate right, charitably opined that Eva was a very unhappy person. At my left, Eric Grimaldi gave what I took to be a grunt of agreement. Maxine leaped on the idea. “Sara? Heather? Now, you heard that! Does that make you feel better?” Before either could reply, Max addressed the table at large: “There was actually an attempt of sorts to lodge an official complaint.”

  “About us,” Sara explained.

  Heather corrected her. “More about agility. The obstacles weren’t quote sufficiently challenging unquote for somebody’s quote natural unquote at agility, and they better be raised pronto, and … Holly heard her. What she intends to do is to go and use our equipment when we’re not there. She said it this morning when everyone was there, and when Sara ran into her this afternoon, Eva—this is unbelievable!—she made a pretend gun out of her fist, and she pointed it at Sara, and she said, ‘One A.M.!’ Is that childish? Like it’s the OK Corral.”

  “Also,” said Sara, “she complained to Max that we were ‘surly.’ Surly! Hah! All we did was remind everyone not to use the equipment when we weren’t there. We didn’t single her out. What we should’ve done was toss her out on her ear.”

  Heather said damningly, “That’s one person with what I’d call zero aptitude for agility. The dog, maybe you could work with. But her? Forget it. The whole problem is that she just does not understand dogs.”

  “If that, uh, basic affinity simply is missing,” pronounced Phyllis Abbott, “there really isn’t a great deal to be done.”

  I found my eyes fixed on Don Abbott, who was alternately pouring down wine and picking at a big helping of pot roast.

  Eric spoke up. “You’re born with it or not. So I’ve always claimed. Genetic. You have it or you don’t.”

  Maxine nodded. “Just wait till they finally finish cracking this DNA code. You’ll see! It’ll be right there next to eye color or whatever, just like color blindness—dog blindness! So it really all depends on the roll of the dice. You luck out, you love dogs; you don’t, you don’t.”

  In other company, I’d have spoken up as Nurture’s lone defender, albeit a rather weak one, because I certainly agreed with the proposition that loving dogs had a strong genetic basis. I disagreed only in believing that the potential was universal, waiting there in every human infant’s DNA, but activated only in the fortunate by a powerful environmental trigger, a crucial childhood experience that allowed the genes to express their full potential, a sort of all-determining Primal Woof. Think of the implications for therapy. So you see? There’s hope for everyone.

  Or almost everyone. Events at my own table and at the one in back of me suggested two exceptions. The first, the subject of discussion amongst Phyllis, Don, Eric, and Cam, was a woman I’ll call Lizzie Nopet, who was the head of a certain animal-rights group and the person whom the fancy most loved to hate. If we’d held an election for a sort of un-president—the last person on earth we’d have chosen as our leader—Lizzie, as everyone called her, would’ve been assured a unanimous victory. I was as sickened as everyone else by what the fancy viewed as Lizzie’s twisted vision of a dogless, catless, loveless future, a sort of Black Mass utopia in which domestic animals would return to the disease-ridden wild, thus abandoning us with nothing to pat and train except one another. At the risk of jeopard
izing my own position in the fancy by suggesting that I was soft on Lizzie, I’ll argue, however, that as the ultimate outcast, Lizzie did a spectacular job of bringing us together.

  Unfortunately, though, almost everything to be said about Lizzie had already been said so many times that, as a topic of conversation, she soon left our table in a silence that was filled by the second exception to my hope-for-everyone credo, namely, Eva Spitteler, who could be overheard loudly lecturing to her tablemates, that is, the people on whom she’d managed to force herself. A glance over my shoulder revealed Myrna, Marie, and Kathy, the women from New York; Michael; and Joy and Craig, none of whom, I thought, would have chosen Eva’s company. The object of Eva’s present pontification, the eighth person at the table, was a pleasant-looking midfiftyish woman I’d seen here and there around camp with a big tan shaggy dog, a bouncy fellow of unguessable but obviously amiable parentage.

  “Nothing to it!” Eva bellowed. “All you do is get an ILP on him as an otter hound, and who’s going to know?”

  I turned my head, the better to listen in.

  “Well, I am, for one!” the woman replied.

  Undaunted, Eva jabbed a thumb toward Michael. “Well, yours looks as much like an otter hound as this guy’s looks like an Akita.” After a moment’s pause evidently devoted to gathering her thoughtlessness, she added, “And these people here’ve got what’s supposed to be a Cairn, came from a pet shop, and it’s got papers, but ask anyone! It’s no Cairn; it’s nothing. It’d no more get an ILP as a Cairn than … than I would!”

  As a bulldog, she might’ve stood a chance. The AKC grants ILP—Indefinite Listing Privilege—registration to dogs of unknown origin that are obviously specimens of AKC-recognized breeds. In other words, if you adopt what’s obviously a Lab, a malamute, a Gordon setter, or whatever from a breed-rescue group or a shelter, and if you do what you should do anyway, namely spay or neuter your pet, you can apply for an ILP number. Why bother? To show in AKC obedience trials, among other things. And that’s what Eva had in mind.

  “I don’t know how else to say this,” the woman told Eva, “but I just don’t believe in it. If I wanted a purebred dog, I’d get one! Buddy isn’t, and I have no intention of saying that he is.”

  As soon as the woman finished her dignified defense of her own integrity and her dog’s, too, everyone at both table? broke into cheers. Everyone, that is, except Eva Spitteler.

  IF YOU’RE A REAL DOG PERSON, you’ll join me—and not for the first time, either—in reflecting on the vast superiority of the average dog to the average dog owner. Consider Rowdy and me, not that Rowdy is even remotely average, of course, but then neither is any other beloved dog in the eyes of his companion biped. So, failing a truly ordinary dog, I’ll offer him up, and myself, too, such as I am, which is to say, except in the dog-trivial matter of vision, virtually senseless by comparison with Rowdy, who, in any case, cares little for how things look—how they appear to be—but zooms in on how they are—how they reek and ring and vibrate, where they’ve been, and what they portend. Although my auditory and olfactory senses function adequately for those of a mere human being, compared with Rowdy I hear almost nothing and suffer from advanced anosmia, my nose dead where his is quick, my brain, too, as slow as my feet. And in matters practical—food, hierarchies—he outruns me every time.

  By comparison with dogs, you see, every human being has profound special needs, and every dog is an assistance dog, a hearing dog, a smelling dog, but most of all, a superb guide to uncommon sense. I have lived with dogs all my life, yet learned pitifully little from their example. In my place, for instance—my place at the table—Rowdy would have kept his priorities straight: First, he’d have cleaned his plate. In fact, if he’d actually been sitting next to me in the dining room watching me attend to human blather while neglecting my food, his patience with human senselessness would have run out, and he’d have leaped up in front of me and wolfed down my untouched dinner. But as I’ve said, Rowdy is no average dog; He’s an Alaskan malamute. Food thief? Now and then. But a rotten little sneak? Never. Besides, if Rowdy waited until I turned my back, how could he be sure that he’d succeeded in teaching me the lesson in survival that I so obviously need? Kimi teaches the same lesson, the legacy of the Arctic: Food is precious. Eat it while you can.

  With Rowdy and Kimi in mind, I thus turned to my cold and glutinous Newburg, and was inserting a glob into my mouth when the unseen force struck again, this time leaving my midriff unharmed, but driving my fork and its contents dangerously close to the back of my throat, as if Eva Spitteler were practicing a sort of reverse first aid: Having already performed a crude Heimlich maneuver, she was only now going to make me choke. In fairness to Eva, though, let me point out that strife among dog people would be greatly reduced if some of us, myself included, were thus randomly yet regularly rendered speechless. The intervention could, of course, be milder than Eva’s, and the agents of the talk-stopping squads could be perfectly polite. Indeed, courtesy to the silenced would be an essential part of their AKC training. Upon graduation, they’d get official badges—logo and all—to wear while walking their beats at dog shows, pausing briefly here and there to tickle eyelids and ears, stopping now and then to clamp mannerly hands under exhibitors’ jaws, thus subtly reminding us of what to keep open and what to lock firmly shut I’m serious. Those know-nothing know-it-alls who stand outside the rings saying awful things about other people’s dogs? There’s got to be something to do about them! And now there is. Squads. AKC delegate, are you? Propose the plan at the next meeting. And if you’re embarrassed, explain that it wasn’t your idea. Blame it on me. I’ll take full responsibility.

  In this case, however, Eva had reverse-Heimliched the wrong victim: I wasn’t on the verge of saying anything about anyone or about anyone’s dog, either. The probable troublemaker was, of course, Eva herself, who might’ve repeated the ugly rumor about Eric’s butchering dogs with gay tails, or might have come right out and accused Ginny of running a puppy mill. More likely, she’d have got in a few sneaky digs at one or both of them; Eva was no malamute. In one respect, however, she acted as Rowdy or Kimi would have done: She took off in search of food, in this case, dessert.

  Shortly after Eva’s departure, while Maxine and the Abbotts were going for dessert, and people were milling around from table to table, Michael appeared beside me. Looming over me, he said, “Could I ask you a question?”

  Michael was a sweet guy, and not bad looking, either. “Sure,” I said. “Pull up a chair.”

  Cam, Ginny, and Eric scooted over to make room. When Michael had eased a chair and then himself between Eric and me, he gestured toward Eva’s empty place. “You heard some of that, right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Ignore her, okay?”

  “The thing is,” said Michael, “I’ve got Jacob entered.”

  “Good. This your first trial?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good!”

  “But the thing is,” Michael repeated, “is anybody going to give me a hard time? About, uh, Jacob? Whether he’s, uh—”

  Want to get a man where it really hurts? Forget the all-but-painless knee in the groin. What you do is insult his dog. Model Mugging, are you listening?

  “Look,” I said, “in obedience, for all the judge cares, as long as Jacob’s AKC-registered, he can have purple ringlets. Obedience doesn’t have anything to do with the breed standard.”

  Unconvinced, Michael said, “Yeah, but—?”

  “Maybe the judge might ask about his coat, but it’d probably be just, ‘Hey, I’ve never seen one before.’ And even if—”

  By now, Eric, Cam, and Ginny were listening in. Cam picked up for me. “Even if your judges wonder if he’s purebred, the worst they’re going to do is report it to the trial secretary or the superintendent, and somebody who knows Akitas is going to say he’s an Akita, and that’ll be it. But that’s not going to happen. The most that’s really going to happen is that a judge is just curious
, that’s all.” Cam brightened up. “So where’re you entered?”

  “Long Trail. It’s on the way home.”

  The famous Green Mountain Circuit is in July, of course, but because of certain dog-political controversies dating back so far that no one remembers what they were, the Long Trail Kennel Club does not participate in the cluster. Instead, it holds its show and trial in September, making it one of the last outdoor events of the year.

  “Who’s the judge?” Cam asked.

  “Mrs. Abbott.” Michael sounded as if he’d finally spat out what the thing really was. “Can I just make sure she knows he’s an Akita?”

  “I wouldn’t,” said my mother’s daughter.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, why not?” Ginny exclaimed. “Go ahead! Or don’t. Phyllis’ll know, anyway.”