Black Ribbon

by Susan Conant

  I hesitated. “Discuss a dog with a judge you’ve got him entered under? This close to the trial date? I don’t know. I just wouldn’t.” In response to Michael’s guilty expression, I added, “It’s okay to talk to her. Anything’s okay, really. I’m just … The only thing you really can’t do is to show under a judge who’s your instructor.”

  Eric, who’d been quietly listening, said, and said wisely, “If everybody who became a judge had to drop out of dogs to avoid hearing anything, there’d be no judges left. What happens is your friends show under you. So do your enemies. So do a lot of people you’ve never seen before and you’re never going to see again. You look at ‘em all, you nod your head, and then you get down to business, and you’ve got enough to do looking at dogs without wasting your time on who they belong to.”

  “Well spoken,” said Ginny Garabedian, active breeder and exhibitor of Labrador retrievers, to Eric Grimaldi, who just so happened to judge her Group.

  “So you see?” Cam said lightly. “Eric’s a judge, and Ginny’s a tracking judge, and we treat them just like normal people!”

  Ever the irrepressible educator, Marissa’s daughter, I said, “Cam’s half serious. When you walk into Mrs. Abbott’s ring, you don’t have to pretend you’ve never seen her before.” Catching myself, or rather, nabbing my mother, I added, “And then when she gives you a two hundred and you end up High in Trial—”

  Michael got it. A perfect score—the legendary 200—going for a first Novice A leg? Dream on! Well, maybe it’s happened, but if so, I’m willing to bet that the dog wasn’t an Akita. Or a malamute, either. Regardless of the breed of dog, most first-time handlers are ecstatic just to survive the experience without requiring immediate psychiatric hospitalization or gastrointestinal surgery. High in Trial doesn’t require a 200 score, of course; it means more or less what it sounds like, the highest score at the trial in Novice, Open, or Utility, the regular classes, not Brace or Graduate Novice, which maybe I should point out are called “nonregular” rather than “irregular” classes, there being nothing shady, fishy, ill-fitting, or second-rate about them. Anyway, HIT doesn’t require a 200. Empirical observation indicates that what it really requires is a golden retriever or possibly a Border collie or a sheltie, at any rate, not a first-time-in-the-ring Akita with a rank-novice Novice A handler who needed all the encouragement he could get, including my dumb effort at a joke about going High in Trial, and who did not need, I should add, the kibitzing of Eva Spitteler. Insinuating herself into our group, she interrupted me: “And after you go High in Trial, don’t go and offer the judge a ride home, either!”

  In case you haven’t been preparing to write a column on the AKC regulations and guidelines pertaining to judges, let me explain that Eva was and wasn’t correct. The guidelines for dog show judges—conformation judges, people like Eric Grimaldi—explicitly forbid judges to “travel to or from shows or stay with anyone who is likely to be exhibiting or handling under them.” Obedience judges are just advised to be “particularly judicious in the manner in which they conduct themselves in the world of dogs,” in other words—how the AKC loves to hammer in a point!—as befits judges, they are supposed to conduct themselves … well, judiciously. Lest it be thought that in issuing specific vehicular and social guidelines solely to conformation judges, the AKC adopts a who-gives-a-damn attitude toward their obedience counterparts, let me quote from the regs for obedience judges: “A judge who has a shadow of doubt cast upon any of his decisions has caused his integrity, as well as the integrity of The American Kennel Club and of the Sport, to be compromised.” The AKC always talks like Cecil B. DeMille handing down the Commandments to Charlton Heston. And, indeed, in the Sport, in The Fancy itself—the voice of the AKC really is the voice of God. So, while those poor rigidly regulated breed judges are, if necessary, trudging from show to show on foot to avoid creating the slightest impression of personal bias, are the wildly overindulged obedience judges encouraged merrily to hitch rides to and fro all over the place with their exhibitors? Don’t ask me; ask the AKC. I’ve quoted the guidelines. Your conclusion? Mine, for what it’s worth, is that the AKC takes an inexplicably authoritarian approach to disciplining breed judges, but when it comes to obedience judges, suddenly goes all permissive and guilt-tripping. “A shadow of a doubt … the integrity of The American Kennel Club.” A breed judge riding in an exhibitor’s car? Forbidden. But when it comes to obedience judges, the vehicle that the AKC has in mind, I guess, is an old Chevrolet, and specifically, the back seat of an old Chevrolet: Use your own judgment, dear. Mommy and Daddy trust you completely.

  DOGWORLD, Doberman World, Whippet World, Golden Retriever World, Dog Fancy, Dog’s Life, Dog News, The Canine Chronicle, Front and Finish, Off-Lead, Gun Dog, Northwest K-9 Connection, Northeast Canine Companion, New England Obedience News, Groomer to Groomer, Good Dog, Bloodlines, Pure-bred Dogs/American Kennel Gazette, Dogs in Canada, The Borzoi Quarterly, The Boston Quarterly, The Bull Terrier Quarterly, not forgetting, of course, The Malamute Quarterly, The English Cocker Quarterly, The Gordon Quarterly—Gordon setters—or The Rhodesian Ridgeback Quarterly, The Labrador Quarterly, The Irish Wolfhound Quarterly, The Corgi Quarterly, The Corgi Cryer, The American Airedale, The Courier—Portuguese Water Dogs—and not omitting Northland Shepherd News, German Shepherd Dog Review, The Shepherd’s Dogge, Chinook World, Beagle Tails, or … well, I could go on and on, and will proceed to do so: Ilio and Popoki: Hawaii’s Dogs and Cats, The Rottweiler Quarterly, The Shar-Pei Magazine, The French Bullytin, Newf Tide, plus, of course, Working Sheepdog News, American Border Collie News, The Northeastern Sheepdog Newsletter, Dog Sports Magazine, The Guardian, The Barker, and The Newsletter of the Society for the Perpetuation of Desert-Bred Salukis. That’ll Do! Meaning I’m done? On the contrary, meaning That’ll Do: A Journal for the Canadian Stock Dog Handler. And will that do? You’re kidding. Why, I haven’t even mentioned Cornell’s dog-health letter, and I’ve skipped over most of the breed quarterlies, and I haven’t had a chance to mention dozens and dozens of wonderful all-breed, single-breed, national, regional, and local, weekly, biweekly, monthly, and annual magazines, tabloids, bulletins, and newsletters. Enough? Really? Well, if you insist. Let’s just say that here in dogs, we like to stay in touch.

  And let me brag a little. Amateurs and professionals alike, from the volunteers who sit at their kitchen tables hunting and pecking out the club newsletters on battered Royal portables to the big-city editors of the high-circulation color glossies, we maintain remarkably high standards of careful, ethical journalism. Amazing, isn’t it, that this periodical cornucopia of dogs-in-print should, week after week, month after month, year after year, abundantly spill forth a fresh and tasteful harvest? And in its sumptuous midst, but a single rotten fruit.

  Strictly between us? Remember, I’ve got a mortgage to pay; a high-mileage Bronco to replace; two big dogs to feed, groom, show, immunize, train, and entertain; and myself to nourish, more or less, and to clothe, too, albeit not in great style, but decently, okay? So if anyone asks, I’m not the one who said it, or at least I’m not the one who said it first, except that, come to think of it, my opinion is identical to everyone else’s, so maybe it doesn’t matter after all, and desperate though I may become to supplement the pittance doled out by Dog’s Life, I hope I never have to stoop to scandalmongering for the outrageously gossipy, wildly irresponsible yellow-dog rag known as Dog Beat: The Pulse of the Fancy, the name of which turned out to be weirdly appropriate: In listing Phyllis Abbott as a deceased judge, Dog Beat came close to giving her a heart attack.

  We learned about the error, hoax, or what-have-you at the end of dinner, when Don Abbott was called from the table to take a phone call. The caller, we later heard, was a guy named Robert Russell, a fellow pooh-bah of Don’s who’d just received the latest issue and, having talked to Don a few dozen times in the past couple of days, had brilliantly decided either that Phyllis was still alive or that Don had been too preoccupied with AKC politics
to notice his wife’s radical drop in body temperature. Panting heavily, Don returned to break the news to his spouse with the subtlety and tact he’d no doubt perfected in his many years of power-playing. “Phyllis,” he bluntly announced, “Dog Beat says you’re dead.”

  Phyllis did what most of us, I suspect, would have done in that situation. Instead of sensibly placing a hand on her wrist or breast to locate a familiar, contradictory throb, and instead of drawing the obvious Cartesian conclusion from what looked like intense cogitation, she screeched, “What! Let me see!”

  “Bob’s faxing it,” Don told her. “It’ll be here in a minute.”

  Lowering her voice, Phyllis asked Don what may sound like a strange question: “Dead?” she said. “Dead in what way?”

  How many ways are there? From Phyllis Abbott’s viewpoint, there must have been two: the usual dull way, for one, and then the really alarming way—dead in dogs. I thought then and still believe that when Phyllis grasped the true nature of the report, she was momentarily relieved to find that the life she was supposed to have departed was merely the biological one. On the pulp pages of Dog Beat, she hadn’t, after all, lost her AKC privileges and, with them, her license to judge. Scary there for a minute, but—whew!—the important part of who Phyllis was, the Judge in Judge Phyllis Abbott, still existed.

  Once recovered from the initial shock, Phyllis passed beyond relief to real anger that none of us succeeded in tempering. While Don went back to the resort’s office to get the fax of Dog Beat, Ginny, unasked, fetched a small medicinal dose of brandy for Phyllis, who tasted it, made a face, thanked Ginny, and drained the glass. Eric Grimaldi reminded Phyllis that only a few years earlier, the AKC Gazette, too, had listed a judge as deceased and had then had to report the mistake.

  “This is not the Gazette we’re talking about!” Phyllis had indignantly replied, as if it were one thing to find herself reputably, if falsely, demised in the Gazette’s prestigious pages, but quite another to discover herself shamefully defunct in the scandal-ridden sheets of Dog Beat.

  In unwitting testimony to his genuine efficiency and organizational ability, Don Abbott soon returned bearing not only the fax of the entire offending issue, minus the ads, but ten neatly collated and stapled photocopies that he handed around to the people at our table and to some of the others who’d been drawn by the hubbub. Seated right next to Phyllis, I managed to snag a copy. I’m not usually greedy, but as a dog writer, I felt that my profession entitled me to first grabs. And I did share my copy with Cam and Ginny.

  “It’s probably just some ordinary snafu,” proclaimed Maxine, looking up from her copy. “Unfortunate. But there you have it.”

  “We,” I said, royal we, meaning Dog’s Life, “check with the family, and I think the Gazette does, too. Standard practice is that you prefer to hear from the family, and at a minimum, you double-check.”

  “Is anyone finding anything else in here?” Ginny asked.

  “Drivel,” said Heather. “I’ve never seen this thing before. It’s really a piece of junk.”

  “It’s for show people,” I told her. “Or supposedly, anyway. It started out mostly reporting show results and running ads and things, but it couldn’t really compete with Dog News and the other biggies, so it degenerated into this. First, it started running gossip columns like the normal ones—who wore what, best-dressed judge, whose birthday was celebrated, who was at fund-raisers—but then it really couldn’t compete that way, either.”

  “This is trash,” Sara snapped. Proudly raising her chin, she added, “In agility—”

  I interrupted. Dog Beat was garbage, but in a disgraceful sort of way, it was part of the fancy, and I felt compelled to explain that the show people didn’t approve of it any more than Sara did. “Well, for what it’s worth, the one rumor that Dog Beat won’t publish is that it’s supposed to be in big financial trouble. People think it won’t be around much longer.”

  “Well, Max got a plug,” Don Abbott remarked.

  Max groaned. “Oh, God, what’ve they said about me?”

  “They wish you luck,” he told her.

  “Well,” Maxine said, “I find that slightly ambiguous, don’t you? Luck? Not best wishes? As if I needed—”

  “No, it’s a real plug,” Don said. “Second page.”

  Finding herself ignored, Phyllis said, “Donald, this is a matter that I take very, very seriously. Someone has done this to me!”

  Rather gruffly, Eric said, “You know what, Phyllis? There’s something off here.”

  “Off?” she demanded. “They say that they’re sorry to hear that I passed away, and you find that—!”

  Eric was calm. “Naturally. But it’s not like you and Don are hard to get hold of, and it’s not like you’ve been in hiding. You’ve been out there.”

  “Good point,” Don agreed. “We both have. Phyllis’s been visible enough. And lately, too.”

  “All summer!” Phyllis said. “Ever since … We were in Boston—Ladies’ and Essex County. When was that?”

  “Around Memorial Day,” I said.

  “And you judged Passaic,” Eric reminded her.

  “That was mid-June,” said Ginny.

  Barging in, as always, Eva Spitteler added, “Yeah, Passaic.Cam and Nicky went High in Trial. I watched ‘em in Mrs. Abbott’s ring. I was there.”

  My reflexes took over. To be precise, two of them did. I rejected Eva Spitteler’s bid for inclusion just as automatically as I congratulated Cam. “Cam, that’s great! That’s a very competitive—”

  “You know,” Cam said, “if there’s this thing about Phyllis here, I wonder if any of the rest of us … Has anyone found anything about the rest of us? Besides wishing Max luck?”

  Almost simultaneously, Phyllis addressed her husband. “Donald,” she demanded, “would you please put that telephone to good use, and find out exactly who has done this to me!”

  It was an odd little episode. Even for a handler like Cam who was used to being in the ribbons, High in Trial at Passaic must have been special. Furthermore, nothing in the guidelines for obedience judges would have prevented Phyllis from commenting on Nicky’s performance. Having awarded Nicky the score that put him High in Trial, Phyllis could have stood behind her own judging by saying how good he’d been. Both Cam and Phyllis, however, had changed the subject. It crossed my mind that Phyllis could have given Nicky a perfect score and later regretted that 200. A perfect score—that legendary 200—is, by AKC decree, “extremely rare if the Regulations are followed.” As the AKC goes on to warn judges: “When the owner of a dog which has received a perfect score feels that the performance deserved only 197½ points and knows just where the dog should have been faulted, it is evident that the standards of Obedience have been lowered by the judge.” Some judges never give perfect scores; the rest, almost never, and when they do, they do it very, very carefully. I wondered how close to perfection Cam and Nicky had really come at Passaic. Oh, and, of course, I wondered exactly what their score had been, but that means nothing. Obedience addict that I am, I always wonder what people’s scores are—except, alas, my own. Those I know by heart, and all too well.

  Eva’s scream interrupted my thoughts. “Oh, shit! Listen to this!” She brandished one of the photocopies. Lowering it to eye level, she read, “Black ribbon. What the hell does that mean?”

  The term isn’t all that common. I started to explain: “A tribute to a dead—”

  “Black ribbon,” Eva repeated indignantly. “Listen to this! It says: Condolences to Eva Spitteler on the sudden loss of her three-year-old Labrador retriever, Benchenfield Farmer’s Dog.” Eva’s voice dropped. “That’s Bingo.”

  “No kidding,” someone muttered.

  Eva resumed her reading. “It’s always sad to report one of these, especially when the tragedy could so easily have been prevented.” Eva’s face, never exactly attractive, was contorted with rage. “What the shit’s that supposed to mean? That I left him shut up in a hot car? What the—�
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  When my mother died, all the dog magazines wrote about her, and every time I came across the words of sympathy, I felt as if I’d just heard news that couldn’t possibly be true. Again and again, I’d read, “With the passing of Marissa Winter, the Fancy mourns the loss of a great lady,” and I’d want to shout, “No! Not true!” But then my eyes would fill with tears, and time after time, I’d learn of her death for the first time. The death of a dog, of course, is like the death of a mother, but simpler, therefore much worse, like the death of a child, pure grief. After my last golden, Vinnie, died, every card, every note, every phone call, every hand on my shoulder broke the news again. What truly consoled me was Rowdy, a dog totally different from Vinnie, but a dog, even so. And Marissa? Many dogs, one mother.

  Eva’s rage? The familiar outrage: No! Not MY dog! It’s a hoax! It’s a cruel hoax. In Eva’s case, it really was a hoax. The feeling, I thought, was identical.

  Looking down at the photocopy on the table, I scanned for familiar names. Mine, maybe? Not that I could find. But Don Abbott’s was there, and so was John R.B. White’s. I put my finger on it and asked Cam whether she’d seen it. She nodded. The item was trivial. According to Dog Beat, John R.B., her husband, was widely considered a young Turk at the AKC and a threat to conservative types like Don Abbott. If so, Dog Beat wondered, why had John R.B. and Don Abbott been spotted together at so many shows this year? The only noteworthy feature of the item, I thought, was the absence of any reference to Phyllis Abbott’s supposed death. But the inconsistency wasn’t surprising; Dog Beat’s editing was always lousy.

  Cam turned a few pages and asked, “Did you see this?” Her perfectly filed nail tapped the paper midway down the page.

  “No,” I said.

  “Well, read it.”

  Most of Dog Beat’s columns appeared under pen names. No self-respecting writer would want to admit to having produced such trash, but then no self-respecting writer would have thought about contributing to Dog Beat in the first place. I suspected that the real purpose of the pseudonyms wasn’t so much to let the writers save face or to let them escape responsibility for what they wrote as it was to fool the readership into believing that Dog Beat employed a multitude of contributors. All ten or twelve toxic columns, I thought, actually oozed from the slimy digits of only two or three people. In truth, what offended me about Dog Beat, in addition to its viciousness, was its blatant failure to fill what I’ve always perceived a major gap in the dog-writing market. Aspiring canine journalist, are you? Well, the next time you find yourself stuck in line at the supermarket, run your eyes over the racks of tabloids, and read therein your own future. Indeed, The Canine Enquirer! Really, consider the possibilities. Each issue would practically write itself. Day-Old Siamese-Twin Basenjis Whelp Litters of Three-Headed Pups. Amazed owner says, “And they’re just the sweetest little bitty things you ever saw.” Basic tabloid Elvis reincarnation and miracle-cure story, with dog, of course: “Jailhouse Rock” Crooning Coonhound Cures Caddie Dealer’s Cancer. More? Brave Brittany Battles Alien Captors, Saves Self and Cairn Companion, except when you read the story, it turns out that the whole thing happened in 1932, but it did happen, right? That’s what counts. The Royals: Queen’s Corgis, Caught in Secret Love-Nest, Snub Di. That one’s a little disappointing, I’m afraid. The so-called love nest was just an ordinary cedar-filled dog bed; the breeding was, in fact, carefully planned; dogs being dogs, it didn’t take place in any kind of bed or nest at all; and the corgis, sensitive to their owner’s true sentiments, had never much liked Di to begin with. Oh, and don’t neglect celebrities. Exclusive Poolside Photos Show Latest Lassie’s No Lady. None of them have been, actually—male collies have better coats for the role—but the pictures’ll be a real plus, good and graphic, blurred, too, obviously shot from the depths of shrubbery.