Dogged Pursuit Read online

  It’s windy the next day in Belvidere—so windy that dogs are being blown right off the dog walk. In fact while I’m watching, one tiny Yorkie looks like he’s going to be carried clear off the fairgrounds—the wind just picks him up and away he goes. I admit it, I laugh; I’m a terrible human being.

  As I do my walk-through, I’m strategically numb. Yesterday’s military approach, breaking down the run into a series of achievable objectives, fell decisively flat. And with the wind being what it is, I figure the best I can do is just get through this, learn what I can from whatever mistakes I make, and then try to figure out some other scheme for getting Dusty through a course without disgrace or dishonor.

  The bars are being raised to sixteen inches. Our cue. I go and fetch Dusty from the crating center, where the wind is strumming the tin walls like a washboard. Dusty comes out blinking and jittery, as though the noise has badly jangled his nerves. Terrific, just what I need: a Sheltie with posttraumatic stress disorder

  I repeat to myself, “Just get through it. Just get through it. Just get through it.”

  We’re on the line. I put Dusty in a sit-stay and walk out toward the first obstacle. I look to the timekeeper; he nods, “When you’re ready.”

  I turn to Dusty. “Come,” I tell him. He hops up and moves toward me; I lash out my arm and say, “Tunnel!”

  He disappears into the entry and I move along the U-shaped length, talking him through it so he doesn’t panic and turn back. He pops out the opposite end and I immediately shout, “Over!” gesturing him toward two successive jumps directly in front of us. “Over, boy!” He clears both.

  Weaves are next. They’re on our left, not his best approach to this particular obstacle, but there’s not enough time to get him on the right, so we plow ahead. And he botches his entry. But it’s okay; you’re allowed that in novice. I get him back in correctly and he threads himself through the six bars nicely. It may help that the wind’s at his booty, bustling him along. I get on his right for the next several jumps, which form a big semicircle: “Over! Over! Over! Over!” Then another front cross, to get back on the left for the last three jumps—and then that’s it, we’re past the finish line and off the course, and I’m retrieving Dusty’s leash and snapping it back around his collar, and people keep smiling at us and saying strange things like “nice job” and “well done.”

  What? What just happened?

  “That was beautiful,” says Deb when I swing by her and Gus’s chairs (still in the same spot—they seem utterly impervious to the squall kicking up all around them).

  “You think we’ve Q’d?” I ask, slightly out of breath.

  “Oh, yeah, for sure,” she says. “I think you’ve placed.”

  To my utter shock, we have. Dusty has ranked second among the sixteen-inchers. We get a big red ribbon with our names on it and the date and the place and the score (for future generations, who will surely want to know).

  I’m on my way back to the crating area when I’m hailed by Jim, who says he’s been looking for me. He takes my hand and places a little vial of lavender oil in it. “You’ll see,” he says. “It really calms ’em down.”

  I thank him, trying not to let “too late—don’t need it” shine too baldly from my face, promising to apply it in an hour or so when we have our standard run.

  Lavender oil notwithstanding, that run doesn’t go so well. Dusty does a Peter Pan off the dog walk, due, I think, more to ill will than ill wind.

  But it doesn’t matter. It can’t erase the fact that we’ve picked up a leg on the way to our first title. A fact that is still sinking in. We’ve done what we came to do. We’ve Q’d. I feel exultant—like there should be a ticker-tape parade in our honor, dancing girls, a presentation from the mayor, a guest slot on Conan or Leno.

  But of course there’s none of that. Only the two of us, Dusty and me, staring at each other in the dull roar of the wind. Well, fine. That’s what champions are when you get down to it. Solitary creatures. Self-contained. Content to savor their victories in manly, Spartan solitu—

  “Hey, Rob!”

  I turn. Deb and Gus are a few yards off, big grins on their faces, a quartet of leashes trailing behind them with a wind-streaked cocker at the end of each one.

  “Congratulations again,” says Deb. “That was a really beautiful run!”

  My face burns with pride and I try to thank her, but what actually issues from my lips is something like, “Ish, vllmik.” She waves, then she and Gus turn and head toward their van.

  Recognition from a colleague! So that’s what it’s like. I replay the moment in my head, even as I’m living it. This is a taste of how it feels to belong.

  CHAPTER 11

  Tales from the Cryptic

  Another competition, a week later. Despite entering late, I’ve landed a spot in the Great Lakes Belgian Tervuren Club trial in Manhattan, Illinois. Fortunately, it’s another gorgeous, buttery day—temperature in the seventies, the sun splashing indiscriminately over everything. Good day to be alive.

  Of course I’d be feeling that even if there were a monsoon. After all, I’ve got momentum now. Our first qualifying score was just six days ago. It’s like we’ve taken a little pause for breath, now we’re ready for our next triumph. Even Dusty seems calmer and more confident today. I’ve lowered the window a bit, just enough for him to stick his snout out, and he’s seriously grooving on the scents. I can’t imagine what there is to smell out there, beyond exhaust fumes and distressed rubber, but he’s all over it.

  I’ve made a serious miscalculation with this weekend’s orchestral selection, however. Mahler’s Symphony no. 4—what was I thinking? Far too spiritual, too ethereal, with doubt and uncertainty rumbling just below the surface. Not at all my mood today. I’m feeling very much flesh and blood, thank you, and want nothing more than to line up all the world’s obstacles and knock them down one by one. Handel’s Fireworks Music would’ve been better. Or some bombastic overture by John Williams. I mean, if it’s going to sound like a film score anyway.

  I’m also buoyed by a week’s worth of kudos from my All Fours cohorts. As is the custom, I sent our Yahoo! group a “brags” e-mail about Dusty’s second-place finish and was immediately inundated with a wave of effusive congratulations. Everyone seems to have taken the time to drop a line. There was no Yahoo! group—no Yahoo! for that matter—back when I competed in trials with Carmen, so I never realized how tightly knit and supportive a team of colleagues can be. I’m not sure how I’d define “community,” but I know it when I’m in it, and this week I’ve been wallowing in it.

  Surprisingly, the attention isn’t just gratifying: it’s also humbling. I realize now how much this kind of approbation means, and I’m ashamed at how stingy I’ve been with it all these months—never responding to any of the “brags” e-mails that have landed in my own in-box. I resolve always to do so from now on, even if it’s just two or three words—“Well done!” or “Attapooch!” It’s becoming clearer to me that acceptance isn’t something you wait for—it’s something you actively claim. And more importantly, something you give.

  Landmarks grow sparser as we near the trial site. If I thought Belvidere was the end of the earth, it’s only because I hadn’t yet seen Manhattan. This is rural in a way I’ve never really encountered before. There are stretches of road where I might easily be in the eighteenth century. I start to keep an eye out for highway-men and cutthroats.

  When I finally reach the Rush ’N’ Around Agility Center, I can see that it’s really just a big prefabricated structure—a pole barn more or less—surrounded by several acres of not very much. Dogs are leaping and careening and bellowing everywhere. Dusty gets out of the car, has one look at the pandemonium, and tries to get back in again.

  The first thing we do is take in the lay of the land. In short order we learn that the standard ring is in the barn and the jumpers ring outside. Strangely, there’s a third ring as well. We get close enough to determine that it’s running an ent
irely new class, called FAST. I’ve never heard of it before, and the course looks strange to me—the numbering system on the obstacles makes no sense. On a standard or jumpers course, you start at the cone numbered one, proceed to two, then three, and so on. Here, there are about seven different obstacles all numbered one. And each new contestant seems to be running in a different pattern.

  Well, it needn’t concern us, we’re not registered for it, and with a name like FAST it’s unlikely I’ll be signing Dusty up anytime soon. We’d be better off waiting for a class called “leisurely.”

  Dusty’s still acting fidgety, so I take him on a walk to calm his nerves. We cover a good third of a mile before I tug on his leash to turn him back. He seems much more relaxed, but now I’m the one who’s feeling jittery. The sheer emptiness of this place unsettles me a little. It’s one thing to bask in isolation from other human beings; it’s quite another to have the weight of the entire cosmos crushing down on you, with nowhere to hide.

  As we head back, I can’t help taking in the vastness of the vistas that surround me—a majestic sweep of creation, notched here and there by cows, horses, silos, tractors. Living in the city, you forget what it’s like to see distances, to espy something on the far, far horizon. You forget your eyes can actually work that way, that this manner of seeing the world is available to you. It’s the reason Venetian artists were behind the rise of landscape painting: they grew up in a place with no landscapes at all, so when they got to the mainland and saw them stretching out in all directions, their natural reaction was, “Hoo boy, I’m-a gonna paint me summa that!” I feel a similar impulse now, but all I can do is take a picture with my cell phone. Hardly the ideal medium for conveying this kind of immensity.

  Back at the site, I set Dusty’s crate beneath a birch tree with riotously colored leaves, then go to check in. Once I’ve got my armband and course maps, I head back to the car. I’ve got about an hour before my standard run, and I can use the time to mount another attack on the dried vomit in the backseat. I’ve been at this job all week, with diminishing success. There are certain crevasses and gullies I can’t adequately reach, and the stuff has virtually calcified in there. I do what I can, chipping away, but it’s increasingly clear that I’ll never get it all, try as I might. If it weren’t so visible, I wouldn’t mind so much. I knew glory came at a price, but did it have to be my resale value?

  I go back to the barn to check on where things stand. The open class has wound up, and the volunteers are refitting the course for novice. The call sheet is up, and I put a check by my name to indicate that I’m here. As I skim the list, I recognize one of today’s other competitors: Vicky Bruning. She’s the breeder from whom Jeffrey and I bought our very first dog, Nelson, some eighteen years ago. According to the sheet, she’s here to run a Sheltie in the twelve-inch category.

  I met her only that one time, and very long ago it was, so I have no recollection of what she looks like. I scope out all the women of a certain age with Shelties, but of course this is an agility trial so there’s a whole glee club of those, and I’m not prepared to approach each of them and ask, “Pardon me, might you be Vicky?” I don’t have a lot to say to the real Vicky, so I can’t expend that much social energy on red herrings.

  But as I seek her out, I find myself remembering Nelson. He was very good company, and he got plenty of opportunities to be. Back then, Jeffrey and I were much more active and on the go, and whenever we dashed off somewhere we took him along. It’s no wonder he never suffered from the kind of restlessness that Carmen endured when we adopted her years later, after middle age had slowed us down. Fortunately, by then there was agility to take up the slack. Apparently, Vicky Bruning has discovered this as well.

  As I go looking for her, it suddenly strikes me as odd that I’m actively seeking out company. When I first learned I’d be the only All Fours team member to compete at this event, I’d felt a little thrill of relief at the idea of being alone. But now that I’m here, I feel the need to connect. Is it possible I’m becoming one of these people? Looking around me, I can’t believe this is true. I’m the only one on site who isn’t wearing dog-themed apparel; the only one who didn’t arrive in a van plastered with canine decals. I can’t imagine what it would take for me to put on a “Sheltie Spin Doctor” T-shirt, or to slap my Saab with a bright yellow “Agility Dog On Board” sticker. What I’m feeling is obviously some kind of fluke, probably weather related. But I go with it.

  I don’t actually locate Vicky till the walk-through. There are only twenty-four people in the entire novice class, so it’s just a matter of honing in on the ones who are about the right age, then checking the names on their armbands. Even so, this is a little difficult with all two-dozen handlers marching in various patterns around me; it’s like trying to count supersized baby chicks. Eventually, I ferret her out; she’s older than I remember (well, nearly two decades have passed) and has that unself-conscious look many dog people maintain, like they’ve dressed themselves in whatever clothes were closest at hand, regardless of how anything works with anything else—which is usually not at all. Her hair is thin and a bit wild, and as she strides the course purposefully, her face wears a look that is somehow both distracted and highly focused. An odd bird, to be sure, but again—she’s a breeder. They tend to be rather singular people.

  I approach her a while later, while we’re both waiting for our turns to run. “Vicky? My name’s Robert Rodi. I don’t know if you remember me; I bought a dog from you eighteen years ago. Nelson . . . ?”

  She gives me a briefly hooded look, as though filing through some internal database, then brightens and says, “Oh, certainly, I remember Nelson.” For a moment I think she’s going to ask after him, but of course she’d know he must be dead by now. And being a breeder she won’t be sentimental enough to care how. She nods at Dusty, who’s all but hiding behind my legs, and says, “This is your dog now?”

  “One of them,” I say, and I gently pull him out from behind me. “This is Dusty. And that’s your Dakota, right? She’s beautiful. Dusty, say hi to Dakota.” Dusty refuses, but Dakota takes the initiative and steps up to give him a polite sniff—and seeing this silky, bouncy, unrelentingly adorable specimen side by side with Dusty, I’m reminded again of how funny looking he is, how scrawny and gangly and pinched. And for a moment, God forgive me, I am embarrassed.

  “He’s a cryptic blue,” I say proudly, grasping for the one incontestable arrow in his quiver.

  “I know,” she says darkly. “I’m seeing more and more of those lately.” She shakes her head. “Irresponsible breeding.” She must see the stricken look on my face, because she quickly adds, “Well, he’s not irresponsible.”

  The world has suddenly turned upside down. The very quality I’ve been accustomed to thinking most to Dusty’s credit is suddenly presented to me as a kind of shame from which he needs to be absolved of blame. Suddenly Dakota backs away from us, as though recognizing that we’re from the wrong side of the genetic tracks.

  While I stand here, reeling, Vicky continues in a manner-of-fact way to rebuke the practices of the kind of reckless Sheltie breeders who strive to create new strains for variety’s sake. “The pure whites are the most tragic,” she says. “They don’t usually live long.” She gives Dusty another look, as if to ask, “And how old is this one, anyway?”

  “That’s terrible,” I say, I hope not too defiantly, “but really Dusty’s in terrific health.”

  Again I expect her to offer some kind of token compliment—everybody does this—just some little reference to how handsome or smart or friendly he is, and you don’t even have to mean it, but she seems oblivious to this kind of nicety. I suppose I should expect that. After all, Shelties are livestock to her.

  All the same, I feel suddenly stupid and rudderless. I don’t know what to do or say, so I start looking for the first opportunity to escape. Fortunately, at just this moment the twenty-inch dogs finish running and the bar goes down to sixteen. I excuse myself from
Vicky and go wait in the hole.

  Maybe because of this little disorienting moment, our standard run is not a success. Dusty bails off both the teeter and the dog walk, and as tempting as it’d be to go back and retry them, that’s not allowed for contact obstacles the way it is for jumps and weaves. If you try it, you’ll be whistled off the course. So we’re forced to finish off the balance of our run while knowing that there’s no hope of qualifying.

  Of course Vicky has witnessed this whole pitiable performance. And of course Vicky and Dakota then go on to Q easily.

  For some reason, Vicky is competing in standard only, not in jumpers, so she now collects her coat and crate and departs. “I’m sure we’ll run into each other again,” she says as she goes, and I’m left wondering if I can possibly get another dog before that happens.

  By now it’s lunchtime, and the agility club is serving up some kind of shredded-beef sandwiches to the volunteer workers. The beef is in a big steaming vat, and the smell of it begins to make me queasy. When people start glooping it up onto spongy white buns, I can feel my gorge rise.

  I’ve learned not to make too big a display of my food snobbery, because it doesn’t go over very well. People tend not to like it when you imply that they’ve spent pretty much their entire lives going about a fundamental human activity in completely the wrong way. They get their backs up. Still, not commenting on the offense doesn’t mean I have to endure it, so I go back to the car and fetch my own lunch: a bowl of tortellini al pesto, made with the last of this summer’s basil crop. I eat it seated beneath a tree, Dusty beside me, watching the conclusion of the open jumpers class.

  Ironically, our own jumpers run turns out to be a winner. It feels great as we’re running it, and we even earn some applause as we finish. When the scores go up, I see to my astonishment that not only have we Q’d, we’ve also taken first place: we’re going home with a blue ribbon! Granted, there were only two dogs in the sixteen-inch category, and the other one was a bit of a spaz, so it’s not that great a victory—but what the hell, we’ll take it.