by Josh Dean
And Kimberly’s pessimism was not unfounded. Beyoncé won both days in Virginia, taking the Herding Group on Sunday and nearly taking it Saturday, when she earned a Group 2. Heather later reported that she had no complaints about Jack’s performance and that Sunday’s judge sought her out afterward to say that she “absolutely loved him” but that “he could be fitter.” She added that Jack and Beyoncé were “by far” the two best dogs she’d judged all day. It was high praise, but the criticism was justified. Heather was right again.
“My treadmill is broken, and the weather hasn’t been good, but we will start running again now that the weather is better,” was Kimberly’s response when I relayed the conversation.
Failing an upset, the most exciting thing about the Virginia shows for Kimberly was that Heather asked her to be the team’s assistant. Being still new to shows, and easily the least experienced owner among the regulars around the setup, she was thrilled to feel included. Despite any tension that might exist in their relationship, the fact that Heather had asked her to participate officially was appreciated. It didn’t matter that what this really meant was that none of their regular assistants were available and that she would be the gopher, doing the jobs that Heather and Kevin either had no time for or didn’t wish to do. No matter—Kimberly was happy just to be asked.
She was also happy because the latest rankings were out and Jack was again on the rise. Ratings are released at the end of each month, and as of March 31 he was the number-nine Aussie in the all-breed rankings and the number-twelve Aussie overall. “Not a bad start,” Kimberly wrote in an e-mail to Heather and Kerry. “I’m so lucky!”
It made the less glamorous reality of her apprentice work in Virginia that much easier to take. The first thing Heather said when she arrived in Harrisonburg was that the Cardigan Welsh corgi Thor was desperately in need of a bath; he’d gotten diarrhea in his crate on the drive down and was now a nervous, short-legged mess.
The task of rectifying such a crisis is ugly enough, but it was made worse by Thor’s unwillingness to let Kim anywhere near his rear end, which he was protecting as if his ass were full of jewels. She did the best she could and then told Kevin that he might want to check that there wasn’t something more serious going on. Kevin managed to calm the dog enough to get a look under the hood, and . . . well, here’s what he found, according to Kimberly: “His balls were bright red and raw. They were so sensitive and almost sticky.” The problem, it turned out, was that there were multiple bitches in heat at Thor’s house and he’d had no access to them. So he’d just licked himself obsessively for days, in misery.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Like Walking Energy
on a Leash
* * *
When a dog is sad or happy, the feeling occupies his entire being; the dog becomes pure happiness or pure sadness.
—JEFFREY MOUSSAIEFF MASSON, Dogs Never Lie About Love
* * *
Jack’s place is a neat, white-sided town house on a street of neat, white-sided town houses in the quiet hamlet of Chalfont, Pennsylvania. It’s bucolic country, rolling and green and especially yellow-lit and flowery on a warm, sunny day in April, the kind of day that makes anyplace look and feel like California.
In two days’ time, Jack would be off to Heather’s again, and then to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where he’d face off against the deepest pool of champions yet this spring, thanks to rumors that the Saturday show would be broadcast on Animal Planet. Kimberly took Jack’s lost weekend in Harrisonburg harder than I’d expected, considering he ran into the unstoppable number-one Australian shepherd in the country, but her spirits were buoyed the April rankings, which (at least on the all-breed list) put her dog in the country’s top 10.
Also brightening her spirits was the news that Kerry had decided to ship Jack’s first-ever girlfriend out to Pennsylvania for breeding instead of having a vial of his potential progeny FedExed out to California on dry ice. This meant that Jack would get to “live cover,” the dog-world euphemism for having actual intercourse. Breeding isn’t as easy or intuitive as you might think, especially for a young dog who’s never so much as fake-humped anything livelier than a human leg. Some dogs just don’t ever excel. And Jack might not. But at least he’d get his shot, and this made Kimberly happy.
It was Thursday, and Halle B, the chosen bitch, was already in day four of heat. There was little time to waste. Kerry planned to box her up and have her on a plane by Monday, so that she could arrive and get acclimated in time to be comfortable for her short window of fertility—days ten through twelve of the estrous cycle.
Since Kimberly had never bred dogs before, many questions were yet to be answered. Foremost among them, would Halle stay and whelp in Pennsylvania or be sent home after her love holiday? Of course, she needed the dog to get pregnant first, so Kimberly planned to study up and have her friend Maggie, a local owner and exhibitor of Aussies she’d met on the show circuit (and who had some experience breeding), over to assist. Lastly, she researched and found a good local reproductive veterinarian. The rest would be up to Jack (and Halle).
While she was at it, Kimberly planned to get Jack’s sperm extracted anyway. “God forbid something should happen,” she said. Dogs are subject to the same cruel fates as the rest of us. “And Kerry’s already had someone asking if he was available.”
First things first: We had to find out if Jack was even good at this. And then if his puppies would indeed be good stock. Until that was known, “he’s not proven,” Kimberly said. In terms of a stud fee, owners basically set their own price, though, like anything, it’s only as much as the market will bear. Kimberly settled with twelve hundred dollars in mind as a starting point. Tanner, by comparison, was twenty-five hundred a pop, but Tanner is proven—he has produced finished champions, even if he hasn’t managed to master the actual art of natural reproduction. Proven for Jack would be a two-part process: He’d need “to prove that he’s studly,” in Kimberly’s words, and then that he can produce champions.
Jack had no idea what excitement was about to befall him. Instead he was at the window barking and going nuts as if I had just pulled up atop a giant wolf or been attempting to jimmy the door with a crowbar while wearing a mime costume and a Hamburglar mask. If you were to meet Jack at home, showing up unannounced, you would not think, “This is a top-ranked show dog.” You would think, “This is a wild animal.” And his pal Summer isn’t much better. The two of them tend to greet visitors with great vigor that is not easily subdued.
Jack in particular will propel himself at your midsection in the style of a battering ram or a bull in Pamplona. The first time he did this, he actually collided with my genitals with great force, causing me to double over. At which time he jumped on my back. “He has taken out many a man,” Kimberly said, and laughed.
By this point, four months into our friendship, I knew to bend my right leg (only because I favor it; either leg will do) and raise it in front of my crotch like a hockey goalie deflecting a puck, then push him in the snout when he bounced up. Then I would attempt to position a piece of furniture—say, a dining-room chair—between him and me until he was settled down.
When the excitement seems uncontainable, Kimberly has a secret weapon. She has a little A-frame metal fence that came with one of her travel crates. It’s tiny, not even chest-high on Summer, but it works like a force field. It’s so low that Jack could fall over it accidentally, but he wouldn’t dare risk it. Kimberly could put it in front of a pile of raw meat, so that it blocked the way only in front but was open on the sides, and Jack wouldn’t eat even if he were starving. It was kind of amazing to witness, especially if you understand dogs to be mostly id, with only gossamers of superego holding back those primal impulses. “He started off afraid of it, but now he just respects it,” Kimberly said. And Summer has learned from him to respect it, too.
Jack is also easily distracted with tricks. “Jack, where’s your Frisbee?” I asked him. He froze and cocked his h
ead, always to the right.
“I think it’s downstairs,” Kimberly said, and he looked at her the same way, then trotted around the corner out of sight and skittered down the wooden stairs to the basement. A minute later he was back carrying a Frisbee, but not his Frisbee. This one was purple. “Jack’s is in bad shape,” Kimberly explained. “He broke it in half, and I had to tape it up, but it doesn’t really fly anymore.”
Kimberly had promised Heather she’d be resolute on the issue of Jack’s weight. Every morning, weather permitting, she was throwing his Frisbee for ten to fifteen minutes, and since Jack does nothing half-assed, this was a fairly intense workout. He likes his Frisbee to be thrown with verve and altitude, so that he needs to jump to catch it. He’ll then sprint back and drop it for the next throw. After ten minutes he’ll be panting like a dog that’s just run the thousand-meter hurdles, which he sort of has. At least three evenings a week, Kimberly or Megan would also take Jack for a jog, and if it was raining, there was always the treadmill, which was now (sort of) fixed.
“Jack loves the treadmill,” Kimberly reminded me, then demonstrated by unfolding it from the wall of her living room. Jack immediately ran and stood on it, just as he is likely to jump up and stand on any table, platform, or ottoman that crosses his path. (This is a vestige of his agility training—the table sit-and-stay is part of any agility course).
“It’s not really working that well,” Kimberly said as she shooed him off while it whirred and thumped to life. Once the track was moving at a decent clip, she gave him the okay, and Jack set about trotting. He’d prefer the treadmill go faster, frankly.
To further distract him, Kimberly had a game. She put him on a stay in the kitchen and tore up a few sticks of Pup-Peroni, which she then hid all around the main floor of her house—and not in obvious places: on windowsills, under couches, behind throw pillows. She then released him, and he began his sweep, first with a quick dash around the floor, jerking his head to and fro to catch scents. Then he returned to the living room and searched more methodically, with his nose on the floor, seeking scent trails. When he found a treat, he gobbled it and moved on. A few treats in, he came and stood in front of her to see how he was doing. If she said, “Jack, did you find all your treats? Did you find them all? Where are they?” it meant that he had not and that he should continue. If she said, “Good boy,” and patted him, he was done. Kimberly and Taylor had taught Jack to play hide-and-seek, and he loved that, too. Kimberly would put her hands over Jack’s eyes and hold a stay until Taylor was well hidden, at which time Kimberly would remove her hand and Jack would always find him, thanks to his excellent nose.
Kimberly is convinced that Jack could be a champion tracking dog, too, even though this is not at all a strength of Australian shepherds. She once scared Taylor during a rebellious phase of his by saying she was thinking about training Jack to detect the odor of marijuana and said she is “a hundred percent sure” that if she were to drop the dog an hour or two from the house, “he’d find his way home” like a dog from the movies. “I know it.” (Though she also had him microchipped, just in case.)
She thinks maybe when he’s retired from showing, she’ll try him in tracking, and dock diving,* and surely agility and obedience. Maybe he’ll be the first dog to achieve a championship in every possible discipline. “There’s just so much I want to do with him,” she said. “He excites the shit out of me.”
I think we need a plan for tonight,” Kimberly said, laughing. I had come to take Jack to handling class, to get a feel for what it was that Heather was up against. For months I’d been observing their partnership and respecting her ability to bring a difficult, strong-willed animal under her control, but I’d yet to actually give handling a try. It seemed like a worthy exercise if ever I was going to appreciate this mystical art.
“So you think he’s going to give me trouble?” I asked.
“Jack will be a basket case.” Kimberly thought she’d bring Summer along in case I got too frustrated and we needed to sub in a more willing participant. I pointed out the irony of the situation: that a relatively untrained puppy with virtually no show experience could be easier to work with than the twelfth-ranked Australian shepherd in America.
We grabbed the tools—a bag of Pup-Peroni, which looks and smells suspiciously like the human analogue,* and the choke collar, which is properly applied when you loop one end through the other and make a P (and not a backward P, which can hurt the dog).
Class is held at the Sanmann Kennels, in a large room above a garage. Sue and Eric Petermann have been breeding champion golden retrievers here since 1979, and Sue augments those services with grooming, boarding, and training services. There were four of the Sanmann golden puppies in my class—all of them in that adorable awkward phase where they have the giant paws and gawky teenage limbs to go along with the short, infantilized snout and downy fur—as well as two rottweilers, two Bernese mountain dogs, an Irish setter, two terriers, and a spinone Italiano* wearing panties. (She was in heat, obviously—a fact verified by the beeline Jack made for her.)
Prior to this I’d never attempted to handle Jack on a lead. I’d only seen him work with Heather, who we know has a direct line to his brain’s cooperation center. Kimberly warned me that the other dogs would surely excite him and that I wasn’t to allow him to socialize. Being a good handler is like being a good parent—you have to be stern and consistent. If you allow a little slack, the dog will run with it. And Jack. Oh, Jack. If you can imagine what it would be like to put a leash on a wild dingo that had been starved for a week and then was allowed to jump into a swimming pool full of rib-eye steaks, that’s a little what it’s like to try to wrangle Jack on his lead (which is a choke lead, I should add). But I tugged on him and tried to be firm, and by the time Sue asked us to line up and stack, he’d at least calmed down to something resembling a trained animal.
Sue has clipped, bleached-blond hair and the carriage of a gym teacher. She’s nice and chatty and prone to tangents, such as one about Bruce Springsteen that I was unable to follow because I was too busy attempting to get Jack to stack. Every time I set his front legs about where I thought they should go, he moved his back legs, and vice versa. Later Kimberly would tell me that he was actually being helpful. He is so familiar with the stack that he knows what it feels like to be wrong. (This is the operating principle of the Happy Legs, of course: Once a dog knows how a stack feels and has been rewarded for finding that zone, he will just do it.)
Similarly, when we did our first trot around the room—which should begin with three exaggerated walk-steps: step, step, step, trot!*—Sue asked us to move the dogs from our left side, the show side, to the right. This is to take the dogs out of their comfort zones for a moment. To emphasize this point, she asked us to stop and cross our arms. “Okay, now cross them the other way. Feels weird, right?” It did. It seems that we all have a familiar, comfortable way that we cross our arms—one arm always on top—and to do it the other way just feels wrong. This is how it feels for a show dog to run on our right, Sue said.
Once we were under way, Jack was remarkably kind to me. I know he knows this stuff down pat and he’s not exactly just following orders, but he was no longer acting like an uncaged dingo in a pool full of meat. For the most part, he ran when he was supposed to run and stood still when he was supposed to stand still, with brief lapses every now and then to jump on the head of a golden retriever puppy.
The real problem was me. Sue corrected me twice in front of the class. Once because I was too stiff. “Relax!” she yelled, which just made me stiffen up more. “And remember you’re the boss. You’re in charge. Not Jack.”
The second time she took issue with my running style.
“Are you a runner?” she asked.
Sorta, I answered.
“Well, I’m not, but do you run like this?” And then she did an imitation of me that looked like a man who had suffered right-side paralysis; her right arm hung dead at her side. “You’r
e allowed to move your arm,” she said. “It actually works better if you do.”
I went around the room again, making sure to move my right arm like a jogger. It felt wrong. “Much better,” she told me. “You’ll be in the ring at Westminster next year.”
Kimberly spied me patting Jack on the side and grabbed me when I came by. “Don’t praise him,” she snapped. “Heather says she’d love to get to a point where she can praise him in the ring.” But at this precarious point in his career, praise just made his butt wiggle—and that won’t do in front of a judge. Focus was a constant battle for young Jack.
On the ride home, Kimberly told me that she hadn’t told Heather about our experiment, fearing that her handler would worry that I might somehow cause Jack to regress. I said that Heather didn’t need to fret. I could actually tell that he knew what he was doing on the lead and that the only reason he wasn’t actually listening to me as intently as he should have been under the circumstances was that he knew I was out of my element. It wasn’t until I attempted to work in tandem with Jack that I realized there was nothing random about his impertinence, and it struck me that whatever impatience he showed wasn’t with the task, it was with me.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Welcome, Halle B
* * *
Show dogs come home with us and live on our couches and shed on our black clothes and drink out of the toilet just like any other dogs.
—DAVID FREI
* * *
On Monday, Kimberly left Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, after a disappointing weekend of losses and drove to Newark Airport to pick up a very special package: Jack’s girlfriend, who was scheduled to arrive from California via Continental Airlines at 6:52 P.M.
