Read Online All Shots by Susan Conant - Free Book Online Page B

smile plastered on his big face. “What’d you want to go and hire a handler for?” he was demanding in that deep, booming voice of his. “You were the best little junior handler in New England. Why, I remember the time—”
    “A time that I am sure no one wants to hear about,” I said quietly. “Or in my case, remember.”
    It was nine thirty on a clear, bright Saturday morning. Rowdy, Sammy, and I had had as smooth a trip from Cambridge as Steve’s rattletrap van allowed. The site of the Yankee Spirit Kennel Club show was a fairgrounds in northern Connecticut. I am crazy about outdoor shows, but only if the weather cooperates. Drenching rain ruins even the best grooming job, and mud spoils all the work I do on the dogs’ beautiful white legs and feet. Worse, Rowdy reliably expresses his objection to water, and to summer heat as well, by moping, balking, and otherwise presenting himself to the judge as a droopy sourpuss. Today was Rowdy’s kind of day, dry and cool, and the show was my kind of show, an outdoor festivity with those big white tents that suggest a wedding at a Camelot gone nuts over purebred dogs. We were now under one of the tents in an area packed with grooming tables, crates, folding chairs, tack boxes, powerful dryers, and extension cords, not to mention dogs, owners, and handlers. My father and Gabrielle, who’d driven down from Maine the day before and had spent the night in a motel, had done me the favor of transporting and setting up a grooming table, a dryer, and two big Vari Kennels now occupied by Rowdy and Sammy.
    “Your father is just joking,” said Gabrielle, who always makes that excuse for Buck. Reality to the contrary, she may even believe it. As far as I can tell, she is blindly in love with him. As for Buck, what baffles me is the good sense he showed in falling hard for a warm, considerate, flexible, and altogether delightful woman. It’s possible that Gabrielle’s good looks fooled him into imagining that she was as impossible as he is. Although she’s somewhat plump and has fair skin that shows sun damage, her refusal to diet and to use sunscreen almost highlights the loveliness of her bone structure. When I first met her, I thought that her hair was making a natural transition from blond to gray. I now know that the gray is more natural than the blond, but I had to be told; and if I didn’t know better, I’d also assume that she chose her clothing at random and luckily ended up in soft, loose outfits that just so happened to suit her. As to Gabrielle’s ownership of the fluffy little all-white Molly, let me quote the American Kennel Club standard for the bichon frise: “Gentle mannered, sensitive, playful, and affectionate. A cheerful attitude is the hallmark of the breed.”
    “What Buck tells me,” Gabrielle continued, “is that if you want something done right, you should hire a professional. And I do. I always use a handler for Molly.”
    “ ‘To every thing there is a season,’ ” pronounced my father, “ ‘and a time to every purpose under heaven.’ ”
    What he meant by under heaven was, I should explain, on the grounds of a dog show.
    “Okay,” I conceded, “some breeds are harder to owner-handle than others, at least if you want to win.”
    “If winning’s all you care about,” said Buck, “why’d you go and fire Faith?”
    Oh, he is infuriating! First of all, showing dogs is incredibly competitive, as he of all people knew; second, he himself was competition personified; and third, no matter how well Faith had handled Rowdy and no matter how often he’d won with her, Buck had done nothing but criticize every single thing about her. And now this!
    “We have had a parting of the ways,” I said. Faith had failed to turn up one time too many, and she’d violated our agreement that if she weren’t available, she’d provide a substitute professional handler. “I’ve watched Teller handle a million times, and so have you. You know how good