Free Brute Strength by Susan Conant

and she’ll be taking Molly. It’s at a park in Newton. There’ll an obedience match, too. Steve and I are judging. You could put Ulla in Prenovice obedience, too, if you want. Prenovice is all on leash, so nothing too embarrassing can happen. It’s fun.’
    â€˜But watch out for us,’ Steve said. ‘We’re what the old-timers call hard markers.’
    â€˜We are not,’ I said. ‘Don’t listen to him! We’re not even licensed obedience judges. We just do matches once in a while. This is a fun match. It’s supposed to be fun.’
    â€˜Is Leah going?’ Vanessa asked.
    â€˜I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘That’s when Reading Period starts, and she needs to finish her term papers and study for finals.’
    Harvard students, I should explain, have about ten days after classes end and before finals begin to do all the work they were supposed to have been doing from the beginning of the semester. Harvard being Harvard, this opportunity to cram and thus to pass courses in spite of never previously having cracked open a book is not called something appropriate such as Procrastinators’ Interval or Sluggards’ Last Chance. Rather, it is known as Reading Period and, Leah tells me, is officially billed as a time of reflection and contemplation. About what? The consequences of flunking out?
    â€˜Reading Period,’ Vanessa said with a nostalgic sigh. ‘When all the feeble-minded white male legacy admissions used to borrow my notes. Too bad about Leah. I hope we’ll have a chance to see her again soon.’
    â€˜She’ll be around all summer,’ I said. ‘She’ll be working for Steve. And she’ll be at this National Pet Week event the club is doing, too. It’s in a couple of weeks. May eleventh. Saturday afternoon. Her exams don’t start until after that.’
    â€˜Don’t bother asking Vanessa to help,’ said Isaac, who was the principal organizer of the event. ‘She’s already signed up. I recruited her before she’d even been here! She’s contributing food, and she’s already doing publicity. We’re on all these events calendars on the Internet. And Holly, you promised me some books.’ The club’s major public-education effort took place every September, when AKC-affiliated clubs were encouraged to hold Responsible Dog Ownership Day events. Isaac and a few other exceptionally competitive members had decided, however, that if our club were to be in the running for one of the American Kennel Club’s Community Achievement Awards, we’d have to do a lot more than our usual RDO day; rather, we were supposed to make the club an integral part of the community in dozens of ways. It seemed to me that our small obedience club stood almost no chance against big kennel clubs with large memberships, but I kept my opinion to myself.
    â€˜Isaac, I have not forgotten.’ Steve and I had co-authored a dog diet book with a blunt title: No More Fat Dogs. I had also promised copies of my solo effort, 101 Ways to Cook Liver , which was purportedly a dog-treat cookbook but was actually about training with food. ‘If you don’t trust me, I can drop the books off at your house, but I’ll be there. I promise.’ I was on the verge of telling Isaac about having recruited Max Crocker and Mukluk, but I stopped myself. If Vanessa heard about Max, she’d do her best to match him up with Avery. I had no intention of letting her do any such thing. With all my experience in pairing rescue dogs with just the right adopters, I was the veteran matchmaker. Furthermore, I’d already met Max, whereas Vanessa didn’t even know that he existed. Besides, he was too old for Avery. And ideal for Rita.
    When Vanessa spoke, I must’ve leaped two feet in the air. ‘We’ll have to get the two lovebirds together soon,’ she said.
    In a second, I realized that