A Bite of Death Read online

  Elaine Walsh gave a big sigh, but stayed on her perch. "God, this is humiliating."

  The legs of the table and the legs of the wooden stools around it showed the marks of a dog's teeth.

  "You're not the first person it's happened to," I said.

  While the malamute remained spread out on the floor, I knelt down, slipped the metal training collar over the big, furry head, and attached the leash.

  "You can get down now," I said to Elaine. "She's leashed." I rubbed the mal's tummy.

  "I feel like such a dope." Elaine uncrossed her legs and climbed down from the table. Although she must have been marooned there for quite a while, she didn't move stiffly. Maybe she really had been practicing yoga. "Thank you so much. This is the dumbest thing that's ever happened to me. I don't know what I would've done."

  "You probably would've worked it out. She doesn't exactly look vicious. Kimi, right?"

  Elaine nodded and threw the mal a glance of wry, forgiving disgust.

  "She's pretty," I said. "She's just beautiful."

  Like Rowdy and all other malamutes, she looked like a low, heavy-boned, sturdy wolf with large, gentle dark-brown eyes. Rowdy, though, had a completely white face—an open face, it's called—and Kimi had what's known as a full mask: a caplike patch of black on her head, a black streak down her muzzle, and, around her eyes, a Lone Ranger mask that gave her a slightly forbidding look. Her underbelly and the underside of her tail were white but in need of a shampoo. When she rolled over and stood up, I could see that the coat on her back and sides was darker than Rowdy's, the color that's called dark wolf gray, with traces of pale brown near her wedge ears and on her legs. Having risen to her feet, Kimi shook herself powerfully all over, opened her jaws to reveal a set of menacing teeth, and gave a series of ferocious growls, roars, and snarls. She wasn't merely expressing herself; she was fervently talking to me.

  "Oh, no." Elaine backed away. "Here she goes again. Be careful. Do you know what you're doing?"

  Kimi turned to her and issued another deep, throaty snarl.

  "She's asking to go out," I said. "I'll take her. Kimi, come on. Let's go." I headed for the stairs with Kimi prancing after me, silent, tail wagging. Unlike wolves, malamutes carry their tails high over their backs. Kimi relieved herself on the dead marigolds, and I led her back in and up the stairs.

  "She needed to go out," I said. "For malamutes, that's normal. Mine does it, too."

  "She needed to go out," Elaine repeated with incredulity. "Well, that's not what she meant before. Believe me."

  "Kimi's your first dog, right? How long have you had her?"

  "A month, and, believe me, it's been the longest month of my life. It seems like forever. Anyway, that's not just because of her. It has to do with her, but it's not all her fault. It's a long story. Do you think she's all right now?"

  Kimi was standing stiff-legged at the end of the leash, her ears flattened against her head. She was turning her big soft eyes on Elaine and gently waving her fluffy gray and white tail. As any dog person would have known, she'd practically forgotten her own misbehavior and was imploring Elaine to do the same.

  "She's fine. This is a submissive posture," I said. "Look, do you intend to keep her? Do you want to?"

  Elaine leaned against the table. "It's complicated. That's part of the story. I more or less have to. And a lot of the time, she's fine. And then she'll turn like that. And she's just hell with other dogs. I can't even walk her. She attacks other dogs. But I don't know. This may sound crazy right now, but I like her. So the answer to your question is basically yes. I want to keep her. I must be out of my mind."

  "Make me some tea," I said. "Let's talk. My name is Holly Winter. I train dogs. I have a malamute."

  "God. I never even asked your name. I'm sorry."

  I liked her for not smirking at my name. My parents, by the way, didn't intend it to sound funny. The bitches in the other two litters all had names like Winterland's Christmas Cookie and Winterland's Sweet Noel; obviously, we were whelped in December. Buck and Marissa didn't want me to grow up feeling different or inferior, which meant to them, of course, different from or inferior to a golden retriever. I also liked Elaine for apologizing, and I liked her for wanting to keep a dog that had chewed the legs of her furniture and driven her to take refuge on a tabletop. Of course, I adored Kimi, who was exactly what I had in mind when I was trying to write that column and hoping Rowdy couldn't read my thoughts.

  Having calmed down enough to recover her manners, Elaine took my parka, made a pot of Earl Grey, and insisted on building one of those pathetic little city fires (I'm from Maine) in a freestanding metal mock fireplace that sat on a tile hearth in the living area. When she put the teapot and cups on the coffee table, I started to take a seat at one end of the gray-and-white-striped couch that faced the fireplace, but Elaine stopped me.

  "That's Kimi's place." She smiled apologetically. "She doesn't appreciate it if other people sit there."

  It was Elaine's house. And Elaine's dog. I sat in the middle of the couch, with Kimi still on the leash. She was sniffing at the pitcher of milk on the coffee table. I almost expected Elaine to let her drink it. And then, honest to God, Elaine did. Spattering milk all over the table, Kimi emptied the little jug and licked it off without a single word from Elaine.

  "I'll get some more," Elaine said. "Don't worry. I'll wash the pitcher first."

  As if I'd have cared. Better after a dog than after a person, as my parents always said.

  As soon as she returned, Kimi threw her a questioning look and then leapt onto what she'd evidently claimed as her end of the couch, right next to me.

  "Don't move any closer to her," said Elaine, frowning at me. "She'll snap at you. She's tough." Admiration filled her voice.

  "I've gathered," I said. You're not, I wanted to add. But you 're going to be. "So tell me about her."

  Once again, like Steve, she warned me that it was a long story, but it wasn't.

  "I'm a clinical psychologist," she said. "I teach, and I have a private practice. I have an office on Mass. Ave. Anyway, a month ago, I lost a patient, a young woman. It was the first time that'd ever happened to me. I knew it was a terrible thing, when that happens. When a patient suicides. Or I thought I knew how hard it was. But I didn't. I can't describe it to you. It's something beyond terrible." Her face softened, and I realized that some of the weathered-looking lines around her eyes were recent.

  "Kimi was her dog," I said quietly.

  "Yes. My patient overdosed." On cocaine, I assumed, or something like that, mostly because overdosed always reminds me of Len Bias, who would've been the Celtics next Larry Bird if he'd celebrated less intensely than he did. "She left a note," Elaine continued. "They usually do, you know. It doesn't make it easier. This note was for me. She asked me to take her dog."

  I edged about one inch toward Kimi, who glared at me and growled. I wrapped both hands tightly around her muzzle, gave her head a gentle shake, and said, "Kimi, cut that out." She did.

  Elaine looked displeased.

  "So she was willed to me." Elaine held her hands out, palms up, helpless. "And I'd never lost a patient before. It was as if my patient had said, 'Well, you didn't take care of me, and nobody else ever did, either. Here's your last chance.' And, of course, I'd never had a dog before. I had no idea what I was in for. It was the only thing left I could do for her, for my patient. She'd had a rough time, believe me. And we were just getting started, really. I'd heard about the dog, of course, and I'd pretty much thought the dog was something she had going for her. Or could have. There were problems there, too, of course."

  "Big problems?"

  "We're talking about a person who basically had problems everywhere, in every relationship. She'd been used. Victimized. She was depressed. She had a lot of anxiety. But the point is, I didn't see the dog as a problem dog."

  "I think you were right," I said. "Some of this is an adjustment problem."

  "Actually, I'm not so
sure. I think maybe there's something wrong with her." Elaine looked embarrassed. "Maybe something hormonal."

  "Thyroid?" Kimi's coat looked thick and shiny, and she wasn't trying to get near the fire. Heat-seeking is one sign of hypothyroidism in dogs. "What . . . ?"

  "This may sound kind of funny, but she lifts her leg," Elaine said. "Like a male dog. She doesn't always do it, but sometimes she does. On trees, fire hydrants. Not all the time, but a lot."

  "She's a malamute," I said. "Hasn't anyone told you about them?"

  "This is my first dog," she said sharply.

  "Well, malamutes aren't quite like other dogs. For one thing, you'll find a lot of malamute bitches that are just as dominant as the dogs. As the males. That's why she lifts her leg. That has to do with dominance. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with her. Lots of bitches do it, not just malamutes."

  Elaine's face lit up. Her eyes gleamed just the way Kimi's had when she'd eyed the milk pitcher.

  "In wolf packs," I added, "the leader is sometimes female, or a few reports say that, anyway. All dogs are descended from wolves, you know, but these Arctic breeds really show it. Just look at her. She looks like a wolf redesigned to haul a sled. And what that means is that they're very, very interested in where they belong in the pack. They need to know who's top dog. Dominance is why she lifts her leg, and that's why she drove you onto that table. Once she knows you're in charge, she'll be a lot easier. She isn't abnormal, and she isn't vicious."

  I didn't anticipate the effect my little basic-dog-facts lecture would produce. Elaine cocked her head to one side like the old RCA dog hearing his master's voice on the Gramophone. "You want to hear something funny? You know what I do?" She eyed Kimi with delighted kinship. "You won't believe it. I give workshops for women. On assertiveness."

  We both laughed.

  She continued. "I actually wrote a book on women and power. I can't believe . . ."

  I could believe it. In the canine cosmology of my parents, the natural order of the universe endlessly asserts itself in the matching of dogs and owners, but Elaine wouldn't have understood. "What a strange coincidence," I said heretically. "So really, you've probably ended up with the perfect dog for you. And you know? Obviously, you needed a dog. I mean, one thing I've never understood about the women's movement is how we're supposed to be strong all by ourselves. It's impossible."

  She sat up straight, and her body tensed.

  I went on. "I mean, a lot of this physical equality, self-sufficiency stuff is just bull. I'm young and I'm strong, but I could pump iron forever and not be able to bench-press half what a man can if he works out a little once a week. Right?"

  "Many women have not had that experience," she said stiffly.

  "The point is that it doesn't matter. Why should I do it at all? Unless I happen to get off on it, which I don't. If I want muscle, why not just get a big dog?"

  "As a male substitute?" Elaine's eyes flashed. She and Kimi were an exception to my personal rule that dogs and their owners don't look alike. Muscular and compact, with their dark-brown eyes and those black caps on their heads, they made a handsome brace, a matched pair, vital and spirited.

  "No," I said. "Not at all. That's just psychoanalytic crap. Or feminist crap. You want to be free to walk anywhere you want, anytime you want? You think you can do that by pumping iron and holding rallies? Forget it. Get a big dog. Train her. That's real liberation. Or it's my kind."

  "What a bizarre theory."

  "And I'll tell you another thing." I was talking about something I believe in. "If you want a lesson in power and control, take up dog training. You know what happens if you're afraid of asserting yourself? If you don't insist that you're the one who's in charge? The dog runs all over you. She runs your life."

  "So what?" she said. "Who cares? Power over dogs?"

  "It's more than that, because one of the things you learn is to make things happen the way you want, even if the other guy is bigger and stronger than you are, whether the other guy is a dog or a person. I promise you, once you can order around a Great Dane or a Doberman or an Alaskan malamute, you know your own strength, and a person is going to have a hard time intimidating you. Especially when the dog's with you, of course."

  "Canine feminism," she said. "Has it ever occurred to you that putting a dog at the center of your life isn't all that different from putting a man there? It has the same effect, doesn't it? You're always second, aren't you? The dog is first. Or the man."

  "Only if you grovel. What happens then is that you end up spending the rest of your life marooned in the kitchen."

  "On the kitchen table. Okay." She smiled.

  "Yes." I smiled back. "And seriously, that's not good for Kimi. She really does need to know where she belongs in your pack. What she needs to know is that you're top dog. That's what's behind most of this behavior. She isn't comfortable. Once you let her know that you're in charge, she'll relax and behave herself, and you'll have a great dog. You have a terrific future together."

  3

  Before I left, I presented Elaine with the squirt bottle and instructions about using it. The next time Kimi snapped at her or tried to drive her onto a tabletop, Elaine was supposed to say no firmly and quietly, and give her a couple of blasts of cold water right in the face. If you don't misuse or overuse a squirt bottle, it works like magic.

  We met again the next day and the two days after that. My goal wasn't so much to teach Elaine to train Kimi as to help her have enough control to take Kimi to the Cambridge Dog Training Club, where Vince, our head trainer, could take over. On my first return visit, I gave Elaine a lesson on how to use a training collar, otherwise known as a choke collar or choke chain. Kimi was so wild that Elaine had stopped trying to walk her, and the lack of exercise was making Kimi wilder than ever. On my second return visit, we went around the block. I walked Kimi a little, and Kimi dragged Elaine. Malamutes are Arctic bulldozers, and you may need a training collar to control that tremendous strength, but Elaine hated the collar, even after I showed her how to jerk it to knock Kimi off balance, not to choke her. I'm no psychologist or therapist, but even I could tell that Elaine wasn't scared of hurting Kimi. What frightened her was power, Kimi's and her own.

  "Counterphobic," Rita said later. "Hence the book. Women and power." Rita's my second-floor tenant, my friend, and a therapist. Not my therapist. Dogs are my only healers.

  Each day after the training, Elaine and I had tea. The first time, Elaine put out a plate of cookies and stood by while Kimi ate them all. The second day, before we sat down, I asked Elaine to take Kimi's place on the couch. At first, she refused, but I didn't back down. When Kimi growled at her, she aimed the squirt bottle at her black mask, squeezed, and yelled "No." Then she put the bottle on the coffee table. Kimi already knew what it was. Elaine and I got to eat the cookies that day.

  And we talked. She knew Rita. They'd been in a supervision group together, which is apparently equivalent to the seminars that instructors like Vince attend, training about training. In fact, something became clear to me that I'd already half suspected from listening to Rita, namely, that psychotherapy is a misguided form of dog training, and the reason therapy takes so long and seems so complicated is that it's missing the key ingredient: the dog. Elaine didn't agree. Neither does Rita.

  We also talked and talked about women's issues. She said that when women write, we don't write as women because language is male. I said that I did and mine wasn't, but she was unimpressed, mainly, I suspect, because dog writing isn't taken as seriously as it should be, especially by feminists, probably because of Jack London. When I said that Virginia Woolf was principally a dog writer, Elaine got really furious, even though I'd meant it as a compliment to Virginia Woolf, but we both admired Flush, which, in case you didn't know, is Virginia Woolf's biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's cocker spaniel and the world's first feminist dog story.

  Elaine thought all marriage was slavery. When I thought about who should stay at my s
ide, I said, I was deciding between a malamute and a golden retriever. Or possibly an Akita. She called me frivolous. I called her grim. My dogs, according to Elaine, kept me locked into fulfilling the needs of others. They impeded my freedom. I said that love and work always do. We argued about violent oppression and gentle protection. She gave me a copy of Writing a Woman's Life, by Carolyn Heilbrun. I gave her a copy of How to Be Your Dog's Best Friend, by the Monks of New Skete.

  A few days after my last visit, soon after our friendship began, my friend Elaine Walsh died. I wish someone had broken the news to me, but no one knew to call me, I guess. I found out about her death from the Boston Globe. It was also from the Globe that I learned that Elaine had been almost famous, at least in Boston and Cambridge.

  "A well-known feminist psychotherapist," the Globe called Elaine. In addition to the book on women and power, which I already knew about, she'd written a couple of others. I'd never heard of them. They probably weren't about dogs. The paper quoted a professor who called the books "seminal" and "revolutionary" and also said that Elaine had been the victim of the same violent oppression she had devoted her life to battling. Elaine's death, according to the professor, showed that the struggle for women's rights was truly a struggle for women's lives. The Globe quoted that professor, but didn't come right out and announce that Elaine had been murdered. It said that she'd been found dead and that the police were investigating. If she'd died a natural death, the paper wouldn't have put in that quote, but the whole account was vague and inadequate. For example, the Globe didn't even mention Kimi.

  My first thought, of course, was of Kimi, not that she'd finally behaved so badly that she'd driven Elaine to suicide, but that she might be dead, too. That my first thought was of Elaine's dog may strike you as hard-hearted, but I won't apologize. If I'm ever found dead, I hope there'll be people whose first thought is of my dogs. With a father like mine, of course, I don't need to worry. "Damned shame," he'll say as he packs my dogs into his van. "Damned shame. She was a nice bitch."