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Authors: Susan Conant
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translate. Kimi earned three of the fifteen points and one of the two major wins she needed for her championship, a “major” being a win worth three or more points. And Rowdy went Best of Breed. Speaks for itself, doesn’t it? Maybe not quite. By 10:30 A.M., the rest of the mala-mute owners were free to take their dogs home. Rowdy, however, having won his breed, would need to appear in the Working Group ring, and the group judging Wasn’t scheduled to start until 3 P.M. Poor Holly! Stuck hanging around all day. Too bad for her that the judge liked her dog. Whoops! Maybe I need to explain this group” business. It’s easy. American Kennel Club breeds are divided into seven groups: Sporting Dogs, Hounds, Working Dogs, Terriers, Toys, Non-sporting Dogs, and Herding Dogs. After the individual breeds have been judged, the Best of Breed winners compete I against the other Best of Breed winners in each of the seven groups. Working Group: one Akita versus one Alaskan malamute versus one Bernese mountain dog, and so on. Thereafter, the seven group winners compete for Best in Show.
Anyway, after Kimi’s and Rowdy’s triumphs in the first phase of the process, my cousin Leah and the dogs and I lingered near the ring to accept congratulations and socialize with other malamute people. Also, I had photos taken. Rowdy appears with his professional handler, Faith Barlow, and Kimi with Leah, who amateur-handles her very capably indeed. The judge, Mrs. Ring, is in both pictures, of course. No, I didn’t invent the name. Just as the real world of Conan Doyle aficionados is peopled with actual, live individuals with made-up sounding Holmesian names like Musgrave, so is the dog fancy populated by a staggering number of Wolfs, Foxes, Pasterns, Springers, Handlers, Cockers, Kerrys, and Bassets. I’d noticed the phenomenon years earlier; you can’t miss it. Robert and Hugh, however, had given me a term for it: the nomen omen. There are limits. So far as I know, the fancy doesn’t yet have any Mrs. Highjumps or Mr. Showleads. But do we ever have dumbbells. Gloria, for instance. Scott. As I shall now explain.
After the photos and the chitchat, Leah and I crated the dogs and left them under Faith’s vigilant eye while we ate lunch. The show site, I might mention, was a trade center about two hours from home. The cafeteria, which occupied one comer of the exhibition hall, served relatively decent food, at least by dog show standards. You didn’t have to poke a fork into Leah’s ham, green beans, and mashed potatoes to identify them as such; my tuna casserole had clearly not been prepared with cat food. Having made the mistake of deciding to eat lunch at lunchtime, Leah and I were lucky to find places at one of the long, crowded tables. Lots of people smiled, waved, and said hello. Leah and I show quite a bit in breed and obedience, I’m a dog writer, of course, and Leah’s appearance is so striking that everyone always remembers her, if only because of her long, curly ruby-gold hair, which is in a red-headed league all its own. So we were seated opposite each other innocently eating lunch. On the way to the show, I’d told Leah about the cat, which, by the way, I’d last seen at dawn when I’d awakened to find it asleep on Steve’s pillow, purring in his ear.
“I tried to pat it,” I now told Leah. “But all it did was hiss at me.”
“It associates you with a traumatic experience.” Leah was, need I say, taking introductory psychology. Rita, who is a Ph.D. psychologist, agreed with me that the rate of Leah’s mastery of the subject was astounding. After two weeks of lectures and readings, there was absolutely nothing about psychology that Leah didn’t know. Rita also informed me that freshman obnoxiousness was an understudied trait, less because it spontaneously disappeared than because no researcher Wanted to have to put up with the know-it-all subjects who displayed it.
“If it weren’t for me, that cat would be
Anyway, after Kimi’s and Rowdy’s triumphs in the first phase of the process, my cousin Leah and the dogs and I lingered near the ring to accept congratulations and socialize with other malamute people. Also, I had photos taken. Rowdy appears with his professional handler, Faith Barlow, and Kimi with Leah, who amateur-handles her very capably indeed. The judge, Mrs. Ring, is in both pictures, of course. No, I didn’t invent the name. Just as the real world of Conan Doyle aficionados is peopled with actual, live individuals with made-up sounding Holmesian names like Musgrave, so is the dog fancy populated by a staggering number of Wolfs, Foxes, Pasterns, Springers, Handlers, Cockers, Kerrys, and Bassets. I’d noticed the phenomenon years earlier; you can’t miss it. Robert and Hugh, however, had given me a term for it: the nomen omen. There are limits. So far as I know, the fancy doesn’t yet have any Mrs. Highjumps or Mr. Showleads. But do we ever have dumbbells. Gloria, for instance. Scott. As I shall now explain.
After the photos and the chitchat, Leah and I crated the dogs and left them under Faith’s vigilant eye while we ate lunch. The show site, I might mention, was a trade center about two hours from home. The cafeteria, which occupied one comer of the exhibition hall, served relatively decent food, at least by dog show standards. You didn’t have to poke a fork into Leah’s ham, green beans, and mashed potatoes to identify them as such; my tuna casserole had clearly not been prepared with cat food. Having made the mistake of deciding to eat lunch at lunchtime, Leah and I were lucky to find places at one of the long, crowded tables. Lots of people smiled, waved, and said hello. Leah and I show quite a bit in breed and obedience, I’m a dog writer, of course, and Leah’s appearance is so striking that everyone always remembers her, if only because of her long, curly ruby-gold hair, which is in a red-headed league all its own. So we were seated opposite each other innocently eating lunch. On the way to the show, I’d told Leah about the cat, which, by the way, I’d last seen at dawn when I’d awakened to find it asleep on Steve’s pillow, purring in his ear.
“I tried to pat it,” I now told Leah. “But all it did was hiss at me.”
“It associates you with a traumatic experience.” Leah was, need I say, taking introductory psychology. Rita, who is a Ph.D. psychologist, agreed with me that the rate of Leah’s mastery of the subject was astounding. After two weeks of lectures and readings, there was absolutely nothing about psychology that Leah didn’t know. Rita also informed me that freshman obnoxiousness was an understudied trait, less because it spontaneously disappeared than because no researcher Wanted to have to put up with the know-it-all subjects who displayed it.
“If it weren’t for me, that cat would be
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