Gone to the Dogs by Susan Conant Page A

flashing at me.
    “Really?” I said.
    “Oh, yes. He’s bitten quite a few people. Twelve, in fact. Well, he hasn’t really bitten them. He’s nipped them. But they don’t like it.”
    “Oh.”
    “Visitors, usually, but people really don’t like it, especially if they’re not used to dogs.” Her own dark eyes met Willie’s. “And we aren’t used to people who aren’t used to dogs, are we?”
    I interrupted their silent communion. “Was that the reason you took Willie to Dickie Brenner? To get him to, uh, calm down with visitors?”
    “Oh, no, no,” said Jackie, beaming at Willie. “The only problem is that we take our responsibilities a teeny bit too seriously, don’t we? We have to learn that we can keep our teeth to ourselves. Can’t we? And we must learn to be a good boy with other doggies.But nasty old Mr. Brenner did not like us at all, and we certainly returned the favor, didn’t we?”
    Is syntax contagious? I came very close to asking whether we had actually bitten Mr. Brenner, but I caught myself and asked only about Willie.
    “Almost!” Jackie replied. “But mean old Mr. Brenner was a little too quick for us.”
    “What did he do?”
    At last, she looked directly at me. “He picked Willie right up in the air and threw him! He threw him right to the ground, just like that.”
    “Didn’t Willie bite him first?”
    “Well, of course, he tried, but what good did it do him? Horrid Mr. Brenner was wearing leather gloves. Gauntlets! And he was very, very angry. He wanted me to let Willie loose, and if Willie went for his ankles, he was going to kick him and pick him up in the air and throw him down again!”
    “And what happened then?” I asked.
    “Well, we left, that’s what happened then, and we never went back.”
    “I’m a little surprised Brenner told you what he was going to do,” I said.
    “Oh, that was only after Willie tried to teach him a good lesson,” she said. “When we first got there, all he wanted me to do was leave Willie there, board him there, and you could tell he really didn’t want me around at all. So I said that I was not interested in
that
. We were there for a consultation, period, and I was not leaving Willie, and that was that. So then I started telling him what the problem was, but it was more than obvious that he wasn’t listening. And that’s when I thought I’d better show him.”
    “So you, uh, let Willie loose?”
    “Yes! And Willie did show him! And then weleft, and we are certainly never, ever going back to him!” Black eyes glittering, Jackie held her head high. Willie looked on approvingly.
    “Good. Look, there’s one thing I don’t understand. I heard this story about Brenner and Oscar Patterson? Someone told me that Brenner mistreated some dog, a dog that Patterson knew, a Clumber spaniel, and Patterson went and punched him in the jaw for it. Is that true?”
    “Oh, Oscar did a lot more than that! He gave him two good black eyes!”
    “So how did you end up taking Willie to him, after that?”
    “Because it wasn’t after. In fact, if you ask me, that was one of the reasons Oscar did it, because Oscar knew perfectly well what that horrid man did to Willie. I told him all about it. And then when those people brought in another dog! And he had ruined, totally ruined the poor dog’s temperament. Well, that was too much for Oscar.”
    “Jackie, when did this stuff happen? When did you take Willie there?”
    “Just a few months ago. October. The end of October.”
    “And when did Patterson and Brenner have this fist fight?”
    “A few weeks later. Maybe two weeks. Not long at all.”
    “So all of this really just happened,” I said. “I didn’t know that. Could I ask you, uh … do you mind if I ask you how much Brenner charged?”
    “Well, I can tell you what I paid him, and that was not one cent.” Her eyes snapped. “And I’m perfectly happy to tell you what his bill was, because I could hardly believe that he had the