Bad Dog Read Free Page A

think I actually yelped and grabbed Gloria. Then the breeder woman appeared from somewhere and did about the single stupidest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do.
    She opened the door.
    Yeti hopped onto all fours, trotted directly over to me, smiled, lay down, and rolled onto his back, bicycling his big white paws in the air.
    The sole reason I hadn’t snagged my wife and bolted for the New York State Thruway was that I had been paralyzed by fear.
    “Aw, come on,” said the breeder, whose name was Florence.
    “W-what?” I shuddered.
    “Rub the tummy! Rub the tummy.”
    I’d get used to the high-pitched Japanese-department-store-girl tone people used with dogs around the time I started doing it myself.
    “You have got to be kidding me,” I said.
    “Aw, he’s friendly,” squealed Gloria, who was already down next to the grizzly and running her hands through the thick white curls on his barrel belly. “
Who wants the tummy rub! Who wants the tummy rub.”
    Dog people tend to repeat themselves, because they don’t have much to say.
    By this time four or five marginally smaller specimens had appeared and were milling around the kitchen and conspiring to knock me off my feet. Figuring it was safer to lower my center of gravity, I crouched down next to Gloria and touched the beast.
    “That’s Bella,” said Florence. “He’s the sire. I flew him in from Switzerland.”
    “What does he weigh?” I asked.
    “Oh, hardly anything. One twenty or so. He’s lost weight. What a doll. These others are bitches. They’re all mine.”
    As I was contemplating how casually dog people throw around that word
bitch
, one of the creatures collapsed next to Bella and lay there, barely blinking. She was the single tiredest-looking thing with a pulse I’d ever seen in my life.
    “Is she sick?” Gloria asked.
    “That’s the mother. She’s exhausted. There’s six in the litter.”
    Moment of silence. The Miracle of Birth. Zzzz.
    Bernese mountain dogs are gorgeous animals, as you know, and a big part of that sex appeal comes from their tricolored coat. The fur on Bella’s chest and underside was downy and snow white, like the tip of his tail and the blaze on his muzzle. The rest of his thick fur was shiny jet black, with some patchesof rust on his cheeks and forelegs. Bernese people think they see on their dogs’ chests an inverted Swiss cross, but like the Shroud of Turin it’s visible only to believers.
    Bella certainly seemed friendly enough. Our strengths are our weaknesses. Bernese err by going overboard.
    In retrospect I see that breeder played me like a game of fetch.
    We were filling out all the forms that said basically this dog is incredibly special and deserves first-class treatment, and by the way, it’s so deeply flawed it must never be allowed to breed. We also said we’d never give the dog away, get it a haircut, feed it Alpo or Mighty Dog or just about anything else, let it skip puppy class or take mind-altering drugs, become a Jehovah’s Witness or join the Screen Actors Guild. You only think I’m exaggerating.
    Secretly, I kept looking for the xeroxed sheet that said,
P.S. I’m joking, and so is your wife. Ha!
    Although momentarily distracted from my mission by Bella, I can admit to you now I’d decided these forms were not enforceable in human courts and was formulating my speech to Gloria on the way back to the city—
You know, dear, it’s not you or the dog; it’s me, but …
—when Florence unleashed the shock and awe of the unscrupulous breeder. Casually, she said:
    “Oh, do you want to see the puppies?”
    “No,” I said.
    She led us into the back room, where there was a kind of corral made of busted cardboard boxes and newspaper and a big bowl of water. And six little five-week-old cute-attacks waiting to happen.
    If you haven’t seen a baby Bernese mountain dog, spare yourself. They have a way of separating a fool from his senses.
    “Do you want to hold one?” Florence asked