Bloodlines by Susan Conant Read Free Book Online Page B

discovered, could be coaxed into doling out treats. So at the sight of Betty Burley, he posed himself in a flashy show stance, caught Betty’s eye, slapped a winner’s grin on his face, and wagged his tail hard enough to send the Cherrybrook leashes flying like colorful banners blown by a strong wind. Also, I suspect that Betty reminded him of Kimi.
    “This is a good-looking dog,” Betty said. She has the big malamutes—M’Loots—that you see in the Mid-West and other parts of the country, not the smaller Kotzebues you see here in New England. Rowdy isn’t Pure Kotzebue, and he’s a big boy—standard size—but I was surprised and happy to hear Betty admire him. He didn’t look like Betty’s dogs, and most breeders like the type they raise themselves. “You better keep your eye on him today,” Betty added as she reached into one of the pockets of her wolf gray suit. When I’d nodded an okay, she fed Rowdy one of those disgusting-looking chunks of dried liver for which dogs will do anything, absolutely anything, even behave themselves. “He’d go with anyone.”
    “I know,” I said. “I didn’t even bring a crate. I’m just keeping him with me. Nothing’s happened, has it? I mean, here?”
    In case you’ve spent the last few years exiled on some barren no-mail, no-dog-show island, let me explain. The militant wing of the animal rights movement, having evidently decided that love and protection are exploitation, had recently begun to release dogs from their servile state of bondage. In other words, they’d been going to shows and “liberating” dogs from their crates. Sound familiar? Yes, indeed, the American policy in Vietnam: To save the village, you have to destroy it.
    Anyway, as I’ve suggested, Betty Burley, who is a tiny woman in her midseventies or so, looks almost nothing like a malamute, but when she answered my question about the animal rights extremists, her rather almond-shaped brown eyes blazed exactly the way Rowdy’s do whenever he spots that cocker spaniel that’s kept on a clothesline trolley a few blocks from my house. “Nothing’s happened yet,” said Betty, fingering a gray show lead, “but they’ve been turning up at a whole lot of shows. There’ve been incidents all over the country.”
    “It scares the life out of me.” I clutched Rowdy’s collar. “And here? With that shopping mall and then 128? Betty, where are your dogs?”
    “In their crates, but it’s okay. Lois is keeping an eye on them. So did you talk to that woman? The one that called me?”
    “Yeah. Enid Sievers. I went over there Friday. I’m going to go pick the dog up tomorrow and drive her out to you, if that’s okay.”
    Betty nodded. Her white curls shook. “What’s she like, what’s her name, Missy?”
    “Yeah. Missy. For a pet shop dog, she’s really quite decent looking, and she’s really sweet. It’s just, really, it’s just a bad match. I mean, the husband got the dog from Puppy Luv, and then he died, and this woman is the last person who could cope with a malamute, and when you consider that, the dog is amazingly well behaved, housebroken, nondestructive, very submissive. She needs to be spayed, but that’s about it.”
    “Great,” Betty said.
    “Uh, but there is sort of a problem,” I said reluctantly. “It’s about her papers.” I examined a thin braided-leather lead.
    “You get them?”
    “No. But I got a look at them. There’s sort of a problem.” I rested my hand on Rowdy’s head and began to rub him gently. “I don’t exactly know what to do about it. I don’t even know...” Without thinking, I raised my hand to cover my mouth.
    Betty guessed immediately. “AMCA breeder?”
    The first provision of the code of ethics of the national breed club, AMCA, the Alaskan Malamute Club of America, is this: “No member shall knowingly be involved in the sale of puppies through pet shops or any other type of wholesale outlets, including mail-order houses, dog agents, or