Dogged Pursuit Read online

  The woman waves up the next dog, and I surprise myself by lashing out my arm and saying no in a way that causes her to look at me with a degree of wary respect from behind her purple-framed bifocals. I pick up Dusty, slap him back onto the table, and through clenched teeth command him to stay. My suddenly gestapo-like demeanor takes him by surprise just long enough for the woman to scroll the scale down to his shoulder and get a reading: 17.25 inches. Then he goes all rag-doll again, but it’s okay; we’ve got what we needed.

  The woman completes and signs my form. I thank her for her time, tuck Dusty under my arm like a parcel, and march away with whatever dignity I haven’t already sweated down my back. I feel dehydrated and unmanned. It looks to be a long, long day.

  After a few yards I grow tired of carrying him, so I pause to lower him back to the floor. A passerby does a double take, then stops and says, “Cryptic blue?”

  I cock my head. “Excuse me?”

  She points to Dusty. “Cryptic blue?”

  For a giddy moment I feel like an undercover agent in some Soviet-era espionage film; like I’m meant to respond, “The cry of the lark diminishes at vespers,” then hastily exchange manila files of classified documents. But instead I say, “Uh, no, his name’s Dusty.”

  She smiles at my confusion. “He’s a cryptic blue,” she says. “His coloring,” she explains, when I continue to appear bewildered.

  “Oh,” I say, finally catching on. “I thought he was a tricolor.”

  She shakes her head and tries to move in closer; Dusty responds by actually withdrawing into himself like a tortoise. I’m quite impressed. I didn’t know his skeleton could work that way. She’s not at all dismayed by the rebuff. “Cryptic blue,” she repeats. “It’s actually closer to blue merle than tri, but really it’s neither. He’s his own special blend.”

  I look anew at the ash-colored highlights of Dusty’s coat. “No kidding. I thought he was just prematurely gray or something.”

  “Oh, no. Much prettier than gray.” She smiles at Dusty. “Very rare, cryptic blues. Can’t remember the last time I saw one. Where’d you get him?”

  “Actually, he’s a rescue.” Her eyebrows arch; she seems surprised at the idea that someone actually gave up a cryptic blue. “It’s our first trial,” I add, not knowing what else to say.

  “Well, good luck to you. And good luck to you, Dusty.” Then with a wink she continues on her way.

  “Hear that, boy?” I tell him as I lead him back to the crating area. “You’re not just any run-of-the-mill Sheltie, here. You’re a cryptic blue.”

  Coming so soon after the measuring-table fiasco, this seems to augur well for the day. But Dusty appears signally unimpressed.

  Back at the All Fours turf, I pop him in his crate, lowering the flaps over the sides so he doesn’t feel exposed and vulnerable in the midst of all these passing strangers; he is transparently relieved. I give him a bowl of water, and he falls into a little ash-colored heap, like I’ve just let all the air out of him.

  There are more people here now, and I get my first look at my fellow novice handlers. These are the people against whom I will be judging myself, and accordingly I feel a little surge of competitive jealousy. “Today I mop the floor with you,” I think as I greet them with a big, toothpaste-ad grin. I don’t know why I need to feel this way—that these people are threats who must be abolished. They can’t prevent me from getting a first-place score, because they’re not jumping at my height. Whether I become king of the sixteens has nothing to do with how well or poorly they perform. And yet I feel driven to it. It’s similar to what I feel whenever I jog around my neighborhood park and some guy comes running toward me from the opposite direction. At the exact spot where we intersect, I’ll look across the park to the corresponding point on the opposite side—then quicken my pace to get there first, because if I do, it means I’m faster. I don’t know the guy, of course—will probably never see him again—but it matters desperately that I prove myself better than him. Testosterone: it’s a blessing; it’s a curse.

  There are three other novice competitors, and I must choose one of them to be my prod—my adversary. There’s Sue, a tall, fresh-faced woman who’s running her rottweiler, Norris. There’s also Carl and Kim, a young husband-and-wife combo handling Portuguese water dogs, Fletcher and KC.

  Strictly speaking, I ought to pit myself against Sue, since she, like me, has previously had another dog in competition, giving us both prior ring experience. But looking at her now, she just won’t do. She’s too pretty—too girly. It’s not that I don’t think she’s a worthy competitor; you don’t train and handle rottweilers without some iron in your spine. But this is basically about creative visualization, and when I conjure up an image of my opponent lying vanquished at my feet, I don’t want to see someone in a halter top and headband. I want a brawny, barrel-chested, hairy-armed hombre. So it must be Carl.

  And besides, Sue has run Norris at other trials. But this is Carl and Kim’s first, just as it’s mine with Dusty. So there’s that to consider. We’re both starting at the same time, from the same place.

  I’ve observed Carl in class; I know he’s got drive, a kind of fierceness that’s exactly what I’m looking for to spur me on. Not to mention his cold, clear eyes, which are almost wolflike. His wife, Kim, by contrast, is more serene, the way so many women are. She’s self-contained, imperturbable. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, her smooth face betraying no history of intense emotion—she seems majestically internalized. Her eyes are always focused on the middle distance, as if part of her isn’t entirely here. Clearly she has nothing to prove. Carl, like a lot of men, acts as though he has everything to prove, and that his life depends on it. He fidgets. He paces. He nearly sizzles with competitive energy.

  I peer in at Dusty, curled up like a croissant in the corner of his crate, and I send him a telepathic message: “Whatever we do out there, we must be better than Carl and Fletcher. You hear me, boy? The cryptic blue must rule! We must leave them gasping and broken in the miserable wreckage of their defeat.”

  Dusty heaves a little sigh. I decide to take this as agreement: Message received. Game on!

  CHAPTER 7

  The Agony and the Agony

  As a general rule, when you have to tell yourself that something wasn’t a complete disaster, probably what you’ve had is a complete disaster.

  Which brings us to Dusty’s first run. Jumpers with weaves—a course I honestly think he has a decent chance of acing. It’s just jumps, right? With weaves. Okay, the weaves are problematic, but in novice you get to go back and retry them if you screw up, even half a dozen times if you think it’ll do any good; plus, we’ve put in all that practice time weaving in the backyard. And the jumps—what’s to worry? It’s a bar. You jump over it.

  At least that’s the theory. But as I really ought to know by now, theory and practice can be as different as apples and oil tankers. Particularly where Dusty’s concerned.

  We begin well: I get him set up perfectly at the starting line, and he holds his sit-stay like a real champ. When I get the nod from the timekeeper to begin, I lead him out to the first jump and call, “Over!” He behaves as if both the concept and the word are completely alien to him. He circles the jump, looks right past the bar, at one point even ducks under it—and the more I shout “Over!” the more the command seems to turn to butterflies in the air and cavort about his head without ever touching him.

  And thus it goes for pretty much the whole course. Dusty’s first balk has a domino effect. I balk in anticipation of him balking at the second jump, so he of course balks too. And after that, well, we’re basically balkanized. Halfway through he does execute a half-hearted jump, which not only knocks down the bar but both sides of its frame as well. I can feel the love from the course setters; it flows warmly over me, like napalm.

  Prior to the judging, as is the custom, we were allowed to walk the course, and I did so a dozen times, plotting out how best to tackle it. There are fifteen obstacl
es altogether, basically arranged to form a figure eight. “Front cross after obstacle nine,” I told myself. “Handle from the left starting at obstacle thirteen.” The idea is always to keep yourself on the inside track so that you don’t have to run as fast as your dog (since, probably, you can’t anyway). By the time I finished walking the course, I had my attack down with mathematic precision.

  And now, in the heat of the moment, it’s dissolving like Alka-Seltzer. I’m having a lesson in how different training and competition can be. Everything changes when it’s for real—when the judge is out there with you and the clock is running and they’re watching you out in the stands. The whole nature of time seems radically to alter: sometimes it speeds up so that you don’t know where you are or how you got there; sometimes it slows down so that you seriously think you’ll be stuck in a four-second loop for the remainder of eternity.

  By the time I get Dusty past the final jump and lurch, gasping, off the course, I’m a different man: older, feebler, more at risk of incontinence. But Dee is right there with a kind word. “Not a bad job!” she says, grinning with such sincerity that, I can’t help it, I believe her. “Man, he really nailed those weave poles!” Which is of course the bitter irony. He whisked through those six poles like he could’ve done sixty more. It was just the jumps—which he could do in his goddamn sleep—that proved insurmountable.

  But I feel immeasurably bucked up by Dee’s words. And it occurs to me then: she’s handling me like she teaches us to handle the dogs. Her mantra is always: “Make it fun. Find something to praise. Concentrate on what your dog does right, not on what she does wrong.”

  I feel a brief flurry of indignation, till I realize, what the hell, whatever works. And really, does a starving man turn down a nice, fresh handout? Not this starving man, and please pass the salt and pepper. On my way back to the crating area I run into Sue, who asks, “How’d you do?” I beam her a big smile and say, “We really nailed the weave poles!”

  I return Dusty to his crate. He immediately curls up and shuts his eyes. Apparently I’ve worn him out. Suddenly, I realize what this morning has been like for him: I’ve dragged him to a place where there’s not a single familiar scent, hauled him into a giant concrete bunker filled with hundreds of other howling dogs, kept him zipped up in isolation for hours, then yanked him onto an agility course where I confused him by being nervous and tentative and shouting commands at three times my normal volume. I couldn’t have baffled him more if I’d started hurling bricks at him or burst into flame. And despite it all, he’s done pretty well. I try to give him a biscuit, but he’ll have none of it. He is disrespecting the hand that feeds him, and I can’t say I blame him.

  I’m the first of the All Fours novices to run this course, and the only sixteen-inch jumper. Now the bar goes up to twenty, and it’s the bigger dogs’ time to rumble. My fear, of course, is that my smoking ruin of a run has left the door wide open for Carl. “This must not be,” I say, willing fate to bend to my will.

  As I’m wishing him failure, Carl appears with Fletcher straining at the leash and sidles up beside me to make small talk. I blush for a moment, as though I’ve been busted. It can be very distracting to creative visualization, this unwillingness of others to play the parts you’ve assigned them in your head. Why isn’t Carl psyching himself up to be as competitive with me as I am with him? I allow myself to consider that possibility from his point of view. Big mistake. After all, who am I to Carl? Some old bald guy from the last century, no doubt. He might ask me if I was at Studio 54—or, hell, Woodstock—but I doubt he’ll ever see me as someone against whom he might test his mettle. “Ah, but he underestimates me at his cost,” I think, supervillain style. I then make an effort to chat amicably, to keep him off his guard.

  While Carl and I talk, his wife Kim has her first run with their other Portie, KC. It isn’t a triumph. KC feels his freedom a little too keenly and goes on a tear around the ring, smiling at spectators and working the crowd like a politician. Eventually, Kim regains control of him and finishes the run respectably, but to do so she’s had to shout out his name several times, which unfortunately catches Fletcher’s attention. Hearing his mom’s voice deranges him a little, and Carl has trouble even keeping hold of him.

  And then Carl is on the line, and Fletcher—still twitchy and distracted—with him. Their run is every bit as chaotic as I could wish it. In fact maybe a bit more so. Instead of a figure eight, they end up sketching out several major constellations: Orion, Leo, both the Big and Little Dippers. Fate is serving up my order, all right, with a free side of onion rings. My inner supervillain can’t resist a sinister bwahahahaha!

  A few minutes later, when the bar goes up to twenty-four inches, Sue runs Norris to no better end. It’s a clean sweep: the All Fours novices are off to a unanimously bad start.

  Back at the crating space, there is much dissection and analysis of the various performances: where they went wrong and what steps might be taken to prevent similar failings in the next run. To my embarrassment, quite a bit more of this is devoted to the others than to me. For me there is just general praise: “Good first try!” “Not a bad job at all!” “Nothing to be ashamed of!” I feel like someone in a drawing class, whose teacher tells him, “Pretty colors! What a nice little horse and flowers!” before turning to the next student to dispense advice on shading and perspective.

  I realize I’m being overly sensitive, probably as a result of having immersed myself in this minor endeavor with all the focus of Napoléon on his Russian campaign. I hook up Dusty and take him out for a pee break, then go to the car, roll down the windows, and sit there for thirty minutes with The New York Times Book Review , plowing through long, exhaustive reviews of novels I will almost certainly never read. Anything to pull me far away from the dismal performance Dusty’s just put in.

  By the time I return I’ve regained some perspective, and a good thing too because it’s almost time for the standard course walk-through. As ineptly as we handled jumpers, I expect no better from standard—in fact I actively fear worse, given the greater variety of obstacles. The teeter alone is enough to kill hope; Dusty has never loved this particular piece of equipment, and its fulcrum is set higher than he’s yet encountered it in class. The slam it will make on the way down must register on the Richter scale.

  Soon we’re up, and despite my carefully planned moves Dusty chooses to chart an entirely different course. Perhaps he doesn’t realize points aren’t dispensed for originality. I shout at him. I plead. I cajole. And sometimes he deigns to acknowledge me, almost out of pity. But in general he treats me like a substitute teacher whose authority he can ignore with impunity. Again I leave the door wide open for Carl and Fletcher.

  Fortunately, they fare no more happily. By now it’s clear that having KC and Fletcher run back-to-back is a liability; while KC is on the course with Kim, Fletcher, hearing his mom’s voice, works himself up into such a state that he’s virtually unmanageable when his own turn comes up. Carl is frustrated and exhausted, and even Kim looks a bit strained.

  And so the first day of competition ends with a nagging sense of failure and incipient despair.

  Except for the dogs. They all seem just fine.

  CHAPTER 8

  Trial and Terror

  Dinner is a subdued affair because I’ve returned home with only stories of defeat. But it’s a nice night, the air is sweet and cool, and we can dine on the deck. Dusty usually isn’t allowed out with us because he barks far too much, which prompts our neighbors on both sides to audibly and meaningfully shut their windows, but tonight he’s flat on his flank, dead to the world. This is heartening to see; in my humble opinion, a tired dog is a good dog.

  After dinner we adjourn to the TV room. Tonight’s movie is Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. I’ve chosen it because I’m a Roman-history buff, but its inaccuracies annoy me by being not only numerous but wildly implausible—just a few notches up from Bugs Bunny in Roman Legion-Hare. Still, its recreation of the ac
tual city of Rome at its imperial zenith is dazzling, and the aerial shot of the Colosseum, brimming with spectators, knocks me for a loop. Unfortunately, I, like Dusty, am wiped out by the labors of the day, and by the time the major arena fights roll around I’m heavy lidded and fighting off sleep. During Russell Crowe’s climactic battle with a man-eating tiger, my addled subconscious keeps looking for a teeter and A-frame in the background.

  In the morning, I’m feeling renewed and refreshed, and buoyed by a strong urge for redemption. I itch to get back in the ring and take some serious charge. Dusty, however, is far less keen on the idea. He turns up his nose at breakfast, as though gambling on me not running him if his tank is on empty. But I grab a bag of salmon treats, leash him up, and take him out to the car. He sulks the whole way to the garage; he’d drag his heels, if he had any.

  I tell myself, “He’ll be more enthusiastic once he starts winning,” but on reflection that doesn’t really wash. After all, he gets praise from me no matter what kind of run he has, and after yesterday’s comedy of errors I treated him like he’d qualified, taken first place, and found a cure for rickets. So how will he even know when he starts scoring? I suppose dogs are intelligent enough to pick up otherwise imperceptible cues, the kind that signify, for instance, that someone’s genuinely happy instead of giving a Stanislavskian impression of happiness. Anyway, we’ll find out soon enough. Possibly today!

  The lot is full by the time I arrive, and I have to park across the road on the premises of a tree and garden center. It’s Saturday, and quite a few more people are on hand to compete. In fact the cacophony makes yesterday’s seem like the serene stillness of a NASCAR rally. Dusty is so intimidated that he seems to shrink with each step. If I don’t get him to his crate fast, there may soon be nothing left of him.