Susan Conant - A New Leash on Death

A NEW LEASH ON DEATH

SUSAN CONANT

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For technical assistance, I am grateful to my Alaskan malamute, Frostfield Arctic Natasha, C.D.

Special thanks to Roger Peduzzi, D.V.M., and James Dalsimer, M.D., for advice on medical matters. Any errors are mine alone.

Because the New England Dog Training Club meets in the Cambridge Armory on Thursday nights, it is especially important to point out that the characters and the dog training club in this novel are imaginary. Any resemblance to actual people or institutions is entirely coincidental.

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MY name is Holly Winter. Its not my fault. Until I was born, my parents, or, as they always said, my sire and dam, hadnt had any practice in naming people. In the week before my birth, two of their golden retriever bitches produced a total of seventeen puppies. I was number eighteen. Im lucky not to be Bucks Little Lady or Marissas Winsome Miss. Ive often had the feeling that a human puppy must have been a surprise to Buck and Marissa. They must have been stunned when I began to utter words. Buck still considers speech to be some peculiarly advanced form of barking. When I graduated from grammar school, he told everyone that Id finally got my C.D., which, in case you hadnt guessed, is an obedience title, Companion Dog. With my high, school diploma, I became a Companion Dog Excellent, and when I got my B.A. in journalism, I was Marissas fifth Utility Dog. Buck was proud of me then, and hes still proud of me, partly, I suspect, because Im thirty years old and havent yet developed canine hip dysplasia. Im also something of a puzzle to him. Although he subscribes to Dogs Life and reads my column, he cant understand why I write about dogs instead of breeding them. Furthermore, he cant understand why anyone whos welcome to share his house in Maine with him and his fifteen wolf dog hybrids would choose to live in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Bucks become a little eccentric in the eight years since Marissa died.

My involvement with Dr. Stantons death was, like my name, Buck and Marissas fault. If Id been brought up to have a normal attitude about adopting a dead mans dog, Id never have tried to find Rowdys AKC registration papers. But, then, Id also be the kind of person whod feed supermarket dog chow instead of Eukanuba, and Id never insist on precision heeling, and no one would ever have known who killed the old man.

It started on a Thursday evening last November. Thursday evenings are to me what Friday nights are to Orthodox Jews. Every Thursday night between seven and ten, the Cambridge Dog Training Club holds classes in the Cambridge Armory, and, unless I happen to have a bitch in season, youll find me there. Bitch, by the way, is not a dirty word. One way to spot a newcomer to the world of dogs is any hesitation about saying it. Bitches in season are bitches in heat, and, for obvious reasons, theyre not welcome at dog training classes or obedience trials. In the presence of a bitch in season, the only thing an unaltered male dog obeys is the call of the wild.

To understand what happened to Dr. Stanton, you need to know a little about the Cambridge Armory. A lot of dog training clubs meet in armories because armories are large enough to hold even big beginners classes, and also because armories are a lot nicer than schools or YMCAs about what are always called accidents. Armories, of course, dont particularly like accidents, either. Go to any dog training class in the world, and youll find one rule: If your dog has an accident, you clean it up. Theres another rule about accidents: Dont .let your dog have any on the grounds of the armory. Armory managers are convinced that dogs have one aim in life. On the night Dr. Stanton died, Ill bet Gerry Pitts, the manager of the Cambridge Armory, checked outside at least ten times just to make sure that no handlers were exercising their dogs on the lawn.

If youre walking up to the armory from Concord Avenue, there are chain link fences on your left and right to keep you off the lawn. Just before you get to the steps of the building, theres a gate to the lawn on either side. You go through a set of glass doors to enter the front hallway. The mens room is on the left. Ahead of you is a set of swinging doors that are always open, and through the doors is the big hall where we hold classes. Really, its a gym with a battered floor thats better for dog training than for basketball. Dogs slip on highly polished surfaces, and if theres one thing that most dogs hate, its slipping. No dog has ever objected to the floor of the Cambridge Armory, and I keep hoping that no one ever gets the idea of refinishing it. The armory is shabby, just the way I like it.

If you show up on a Thursday night, youll see a big group of dogs and handlers in front of you, and at the far end of the hall, separated by a stretch of portable baby gates, youll see a small advanced class. To your left, against the wall and near the door to the armorys offices, youll find our desk, which is, of course, a card table. The ladies room, should you need it, is to the left of the door to the offices. All along the left side of the hall are bleachers. At the far end, on the right, beyond the small advanced class, you might notice the door that leads to a shelter for homeless men. The shelter is open only in cold weather. The men are allowed to enter the shelter at ten, when we leave, but sometimes they hang around the front door and the hallway to wait.

On that Thursday night, I was dogless and had been for about a month. My last golden, Marissas parting gift to me, died in September, and Buck was taking his time about finding me another, mainly, I suspect, because he intended to surprise me with a wolf dog pup. Dont get me wrong. I like wolves, and I like wolf dogs as much as I like all other dogs. My only objection to Bucks current obsession is that you cant register wolf dogs with the American Kennel Club (or, as Buck says, you cant register them yet), and if a dog cant be registered, he cant be entered in a sanctioned obedience trial. You can train and enter him in fun matches, but Im too much Marissas daughter to bother training a dog I cant really show. Besides, I make my living in the dog world, and I can always use another C.D. on my resum.

In any case, Id volunteered to help Ray Metcalf at the desk that night because I knew that my doglessness was temporary it always is and I wanted to get my yearly turn out of the way. The Metcalfs breed Clumber spaniels and, to prove Winters rule, look nothing like their dogs. Ray and Lynne are both so tall and bony that if they were dogs, theyd be aging greyhounds. Clumber spaniels are long and low, like basset hounds, and theyre supposed to look heavy. Although my hair is the color of a dark golden retriever, I bear little resemblance to any other breed of dog Ive ever owned.

Ray and I were busy around seven because it was the first Thursday of the month, when a new beginners class always starts, and we had to give people forms to fill out, collect the forms and the money, and keep the untrained dogs from mauling one another while the handlers did their paperwork. Barbara Doyle, who has German shepherds, helped us. We also checked in a few people for the Utility class that Roz runs at the far end of the hall while Vince Dragone, our head trainer, does the beginners class.

The more advanced a dog training class is, the smaller it is. Most people originally go to dog training because they just want the dog to come when its called. Before long, they discover that theres no just about it. Once beginners realize that a reliable recall isnt something you achieve in eight Pre-Novice classes, most of them quit. On that Thursday night, Vinces beginners class had twenty-five dogs, and Rozs Utility class had three.

At eight, the beginners left, and the advanced beginners, whod had four lessons, arrived. Ray and I checked everyone in, and Vince started his second class of the night. Hussan, his Rottweiler, was still on whats called a long down: Hussan hadnt moved since seven, and hed be in exactly the same place until Vince released him. It takes a lot of patience to train a dog that well, and it takes an imperturbable personality to come in at seven, teach for three hours, and leave a1 ten looking as relaxed as if hed been training for ten minutes. When the club fired Margaret Robichaud and replaced her with Vince, Margaret blamed Dr. Stanton and said we were sexist, but the membership doubled. Margarets approach jerk on the dogs lead, and if that doesnt work, jerk harder was going out of style, and we were all pretty tired of her gift for putting people off. She used to tell the beginners that if they werent going to train for two hours a day, they should go home and forget it. She and Dr. Stanton were already less than friends, but he only spoke for the rest of us. We were all thrilled at the chance to hire Vince, who understands that all dogs are descended from wolves and who likes dogs the way they are.