Gone to the Dogs Read Online Free Page B

dog to a beginning obedience class, you probably remember the paradox: The dog acts so wild that it’s almost impossible to register him for the first lesson. You try to ask whether you’ve come to the right class at the right time, but your dog begins yelping so loudly that you can’t hear the answer. Somebody hands you a pen and a registration form, but you can’t fill in the form or write a check because your dog, who has already wrapped his leash around your ankles, suddenly lunges at a beast four times his size, thus jerking the pen from your hand and your feet from under you. As your head cracks the floor, you wish you’d see stars—beautiful and imaginary—but what glows before your eyes is a hideous vision of the future: week after week of this unremitting humiliation at the paws and jaws of man’s best friend.
    But if you’re lucky enough to show up at the Cambridge Dog Training Club, a round, bright-eyed face suddenly looms over you. One small, rather pudgy hand reaches down to pull you up, while another, equally small and pudgy, grips your dog’s leash with surprising strength. “It’s happened to all of us,” a cheery voice assures you. This woman has to belying. You don’t care. You’re grateful someone has taken charge. She goes on: “You’re all right, aren’t you? Of course you are. Here, I’ll hold him for you.” You have met Hope Wilson.
    According to the membership lists distributed yearly by the Cambridge Dog Training Club, Hope has wirehaired pointing griffons. It may well be that she does. For all I know, she may own and train five or ten of them, in other words, a high proportion of the United States population of the breed, which is recognized by the American Kennel Club, but very few individuals. It’s a terrific breed, but let’s face it: How much demand is there, really, for a dog specifically developed to hunt in Dutch and French swamps? And, membership lists or no membership lists, it’s hard to imagine plump, soft-skinned, gentle Hope with gum boots on her feet, mosquito netting on her head, and a rifle slung over her arm, plodding from tussock to tussock in fatal quest of harmless avian marsh-dwellers. Of course, it’s probably also hard to imagine some Inuit version of me, mukluk-shod and fur-swathed, vaulting over the leads from floe to floe, but everyone’s seen me with my malamutes, and no one’s ever seen Hope with any kind of dog at all.
    All this is to say that at seven o’clock on Thursday evening, when Hope and I were at the desk at the Cambridge Armory checking in people and dogs for Vince’s beginners’ class, Rowdy was on the floor behind our chairs, securely tethered to the bleachers that run along that wall of the battered old armory, but Hope didn’t happen to have a dog with her and was hence free to concentrate on rescuing new handlers from their subprenovice dogs.
    “Big group,” Hope said gleefully to me, not onlybecause obedience enthusiasts are as delighted as are any other true believers to witness a high turnout of converts, but also because beginners’ classes, inevitably larger than advanced classes, provide the financial backbone of any dog-training club. Our club happens to have a lot of money, but we still like to feel self-sufficient.
    A newcomer approached the desk, a pretty, formally dressed dark-haired woman with a lively young Dalmatian bitch bounding around at the end of a leash. The woman’s English had a light Spanish accent. “This school is for beginning dogs?” she asked tentatively.
    “Yes,” I said. “She hasn’t had any training before? This is her first time?”
    I thought the woman was going to laugh. She shook her head. “Samantha is a very spoiled girl. She has her own chair, only for her. And my husband wants to sit in this chair.”
    Even though I explained that basic obedience doesn’t exactly dwell on the subject of vacating chairs, the newcomer remained interested. While Hope took temporary charge of