Gone to the Dogs by Susan Conant

inevitable.
    “He sure is,” I agreed. “How is he doing?”
    “How he’s doing is kind of hard to say. But if you want to know
what
he’s doing, the answer is not much.”
    “That’s pretty normal for him. Is he eating anything?”
    “Picks at his food a little. He’s not real interested in his dinner. Mostly, he just doesn’t want to move from his little beddy unless I’m going to keep him right in my lap, so that’s what I’ve been doing, keeping him warm.”
    “He does wake up, doesn’t he?”
    “Well, he opens his eyes. I wouldn’t take any bets that he sees much, but, yeah, he opens his eyes, and he knows I’m here. He’s a nice little fellow. He’s just too old to want to get up and do much, but he knows I’m here, all right.”
    “Good,” I said. “And, look, if you notice any change, call me. You have my number?”
    She read it to me and promised to call if she needed help.
    Then I did something that may strike you as odd and pointless: I went outside and stared at the ground under the lilacs almost as if I expected to find John Buckley crouched there on the ground. I didn’t, of course. I found nothing but a few dead, packed-down weeds. After a few minutes I went back inside to start the research for my story about private dog trainers, the story that was going to focus on Dickie Brenner, maybe by name, maybe not, but at least onthe Brenners of the dog world. My first step was to hear what Jackie Miner had to say about him. I wanted her account, but my plan was to present myself to Brenner as a prospective client. Jackie’s description was supposed to help me decide whether to present him with one of my dogs as well. I wanted to watch Brenner with a dog, but not badly enough to inflict real abuse on one of mine, or any other, of course. Either Rowdy or Kimi would be easy to pass off as a troublemaker—people are always ready to believe the worst of a malamute—and I never intended to turn either one over to Brenner or any other trainer, but I needed to know whether to scrap that part of the plan altogether. Also, if I decided to take one of my dogs to Brenner, I wanted to know what to expect.
    Jackie invited me to stop in. Although I’d urged Steve to hire a second veterinarian and helped him to move to the little house in Belmont, I still found it disconcerting to ascend the stairs to his old apartment above the clinic and find Jackie Miner in residence. She welcomed me, gave me a cup of coffee, and settled me on Steve’s couch, which she or Lee had covered with an unbleached natural-fiber hand-woven throw, very Cambridge, and a collection of plaid pillows, very Scottie. The Miners had made quite a few other additions to Steve’s spartan decor. The tiger maple end tables flanking the couch weren’t Steve’s, and he’d certainly never have bought the crystal lamps that sat on them. He pays very little attention to inanimate objects, but if he’d noticed the lamps, he’d have thought of them as something his mother would buy.
    Because of Willie’s real terrier character, I’d left my dogs at home. I want to stress that Willie did notactually bite my ankles. He didn’t even nip at them. What he did was stare at them and ponder. He cocked his head, frisked around, barked, circled, surveyed, salivated, and restrained his impulses. I was glad. You know why terriers are called terriers?
Terra
, right? Earth. They were developed to go to ground after vermin, and although Scotties have been bred almost exclusively as show and companion dogs for over a century, they retain that instinct to go after, dig in, lock onto, and never be shaken off. Most Scotties are thus high-spirited, brave, strong, vibrant dogs, but don’t get me wrong: Scotties, in general, aren’t biters. Willie was a particular.
    “Willie’s taken quite a liking to you,” Jackie said brightly. “He usually flies at people’s ankles.”
    He’d quit yipping by then and stood foursquare, his black eyes gleaming and