Free A Pedigree to Die For by Laurien Berenson Page A

awarded the coveted title of Best in Show.
    At the end of the field was the grooming tent, where exhibitors gathered to put the last-minute touches on their entries. As Poodles require a great deal of preparation before being shown, I knew this was where I’d find the breeders and professional handlers I needed to speak to. Still, once I’d slipped beneath the striped expanse, I found myself dawdling once more, fascinated by the nature and scope of the grooming that was going on.
    People were working on their dogs in ways that I never would have dreamt of, let alone considered doing. I spent five minutes watching a woman work a whole cookie tin full of white powder into the coat of a little terrier. She kept shaking it in and brushing it out, and the dog got whiter and whiter with each application. A majestic sable Collie stood patiently on top of its crate while the handler dampened its coat then back-brushed it, smoothing the hair in the opposite direction from which it lay naturally. There were two English setters wearing wet towels draped over their backs, and an Afghan with a snood wrapped tightly around its neck. A tiny Yorkshire Terrier appeared to be completely done up in hair curlers, but when I asked, they turned out to be plastic wraps, put in to keep the long silky coat from dragging on the ground.
    The Poodles, when I finally reached them, weren’t faring much better. Some—the lucky ones, I quickly decided—were merely being brushed. Others were having the long hair in their topknots doused with hair spray, then combed into an upright position with the same sort of ardor that produced beehive hairdos in the fifties. Still others were being shaped—handlers hovering over them with scissors, nicking off the tiniest bits of hair in an attempt to make the pompons that already appeared impossibly round even rounder.
    If I’d have been doing such things to a dog, I don’t think I’d have been able to keep a straight face. But not only were these people not laughing, they looked deadly serious about the whole affair. One or two were talking as they worked, but for the most part, there was silence, punctuated only by the loud, annoying whine of a generator which powered a blow dryer that stood almost as tall as my shoulders.
    Aunt Peg had set up her table off to one side. She glanced up at my arrival, then pointedly looked away. During the week, she’d worked up a pedigree and description for my mythical Poodle bitch and presented both to me with a flourish. She’d done all she could, her look seemed to say. Now it was up to me.
    Maybe it was sexist on my part, but somehow I’d just assumed that it was a man who had fought with Uncle Max and left with his dog. Now, however, looking around the tent, I was surprised to see that with the exception of the large setups belonging to the professional handlers and manned by their armies of assistants, the majority of the Poodle exhibitors seemed to be women.
    In front of me, a tiny woman was completely engrossed in her preparations of a large white male. She had to stand on tiptoe to reach his head as he stood atop his grooming table, but it didn’t seem to cramp her style any. She fussed over her entry like a second grader’s mother at the school play. The Poodle, for his part, suffered her attentions nobly. I passed her by for the moment as her dog was white, but made a mental note to ask Aunt Peg later whether all breeders had only one color, as she did, or whether there were some who kept a mixture.
    Several tables down, a black bitch reclined gracefully, her grooming obviously finished. A rather large woman with carefully coiffed blond hair was leaning back against the edge of the table, munching on a sugar-coated pastry. Her shelf of a bosom collected crumbs as she ate, a habitual occurrence, I decided when she reached up and flicked them away without so much as a glance.
    Between bites, I made my approach.