Free two vintage holly winter stories by Susan Conant Page A

she called. She refused the relief steward's offer of coffee. "It's a golden," she said. "Is nine here? Eight can go second."
    But Mrs. Cormier, seated at the judge's table by the gate, said, "Catalog order. Judges are not required to wait for dogs. It's that handler's responsibility to be here."
    Nancy, Happy, and I stared at one another. Obedience judges are never rigid about the order of judging. Dumbfounded, I looked around, perhaps in the hope that someone like AKC obedience director Roger Ayres would happen to be standing outside the ring and would step in and speak up in favor of flexibility. Ayres was nowhere in sight, but Mr. Cormier was only a yard or two away. His table, by the Utility ring gate, abutted his wife's, and he was leaning over it to fish something out of his briefcase. He must have heard her, but his face registered nothing.
    Fortunately, though, or so it seemed, dog number eight appeared, a flashy male golden handled by a slight woman with the trembling hands and the puce-white face you see mostly in Novice A.
    "What are you so nervous about?" Mrs. Cormier demanded as she measured the dog. "I'm not going to bite you." She grinned as if she intended to do exactly that.
    Lest it seem that I have nothing good to say about Mrs. Cormier, let me state that she used a conventional T-shaped heeling pattern and that her orders were loud and clear. If they'd been soft and mumbled, though, the handler could hardly have missed them; Mrs. Cormier stuck as close to that golden as if she'd been the outside dog in a brace. The golden ignored her. His eyes never left his handler's face, even when Mrs. Cormier ordered a halt and tapped her pencil on her clipboard in sharp staccato. Have I mentioned that this was a terrific obedience dog? Sure—I said he was a golden, didn't I? Well, he heeled precisely and joyfully, and didn't even lag on the outside loop of the figure eight. He hit the mat instantly on the drop on recall, retrieved his dumbbell neatly, didn't mouth it, soared over the high jump, always sat straight, and, in short, wowed everyone.
    "Broad jump exercise," Mrs. Cormier said. "Are you ready?"
    "Ready," the handler said.
    "Leave your dog."
    "Stay," the woman said, then left the dog and positioned herself on the right-hand side of the hurdles with her toes exactly two feet from the third hurdle, I swear. Needless to say, the golden once again performed gorgeously, and when the handler released him, the spectators applauded.
    Then Mrs. Cormier marched up to the handler and said in loud tones of deep compassion, "I'm so sorry. I can't qualify you." She jabbed her pencil toward the handler, then toward the hurdles. "Two feet," she said. "Your toes were touching that third hurdle."
    The handler swallowed hard, nodded compliantly, led her fabulous dog out of the ring and praised him as if he'd received the perfect score he deserved. I wanted to strangle Mrs. Cormier. When I'd set the jumps for the next dog, a pretty Lhasa, I did something that I sure hope the American Kennel Club never hears about. I moved to the gate and whispered to Nancy, "Tell them to stand really far back on the broad jump."
    "I already am," she said. "Is there anything else?"
    "Probably," I said. "But not that I know about yet."
    "I feel sick," Happy said. "I hate to be part of this."
    The Lhasa walked back around the high jump. The next dog, a handsome black shepherd, just didn't drop. Maybe happiness stimulated Mrs. Cormier's appetite. As the shepherd left the ring, she caught sight of a food cart in a nearby aisle and told Nancy to get her a tuna on white and some black coffee. Then she started measuring the next dog, a Terv bitch, while I set the jumps at 30 and 60. When I'd finished, though, Mrs. Cormier made me add two inches to the high jump and four inches to the broad jump. "This dog's twenty-five inches," she said.
    "Twenty-four," said the handler, a sturdy, confident-looking woman. "But it doesn't matter. Lizzie can jump