第12章 The Pest(3)
(Try to cross Madison Square Garden, on Washington's Birthday afternoon, while the Westminster Kennel Club's Show is in progress. If you can work your way through the press of visitors in less than half an hour, then Nature intended you for a football champion.)The fortunate absence of a betting-interest alone keeps such affairs from becoming among the foremost sporting features of the world. Many of the dogs on view are fools, of course. Because many of them have been bred solely with a view to show-points.
And their owners and handlers have done nothing to awaken in their exhibits the half-human brain and heart that is a dog's heritage. All has been sacrificed to "points"--to points which are arbitrary and which change as freakily as do fashions in dress.
For example, a few years ago, a financial giant collected and exhibited one of the finest bunches of collies on earth. He had a competent manager and an army of kennel-men to handle them. He took inordinate pride in these priceless collies of his. Once Iwatched him, at the Garden Show, displaying them to some Wall Street friends. Three times he made errors in naming his dogs.
Once, when he leaned too close to the star collie of his kennels, the dog mistook him for a stranger and resented the intrusion by snapping at him. He did not know his own pets, one from another.
And they did not know their owner, by sight or by scent.
At the small shows, there is an atmosphere wholly different. Few of the big breeders bother to compete at such contests. The dogs are for the most part pets, for which their owners feel a keen personal affection, and which have been brought up as members of their masters' households. Thus, if small shows seldom bring forth a world-beating dog, they at least are full of clever and humanized exhibits and of men and women to whom the success or failure of their canine friends is a matter of intensest personal moment. Wherefore the small show often gives the beholder something he can find but rarely in a larger exhibition.
A few dogs genuinely enjoy shows--or are supposed to. To many others a dogshow is a horror.
Which windy digression brings us back by prosy degrees to Bruce and to the Hampton dogshow.
The collies were the first breed to be judged. And the puppy class, as usual, was the first to be called to the ring.
There were but three collie pups, all males. One was a rangy tri-color of eleven months, with a fair head and a bad coat. The second was an exquisite six-months puppy, rich of coat, prematurely perfect of head, and cowhocked. These two and Bruce formed the puppy class which paraded before Symonds in the oblong ring.
"Anyhow," whispered the Mistress as the Master led his stolidly gigantic entry toward the enclosure, "Bruce can't get worse than a third-prize yellow ribbon. We ought to be a little proud of that. There are only three entries in his class."But even that bit of barren pride was denied the awkward youngster's sponsor. As the three pups entered the enclosure. the judge's half-shut eyes rested on Bruce--at first idly, then in real amazement. Crossing to the Master, before giving the signal for the first maneuvers, he said in tired disgust--"Please take your measly St. Bernard monstrosity out of the ring.
This is a class for collies, not for freaks. I refuse to judge that pup as a collie.""He's a thoroughbred," crossly protested the Master. "I have his certified pedigree. There's no better blood in--""I don't care what his ancestors were," snapped the judge. "He's a throw-back to the dinosaur or the Great Auk. And I won't judge him as a collie. Take him out of the ring. You're delaying the others."A judge's decision is final. Red with angry shame and suppressing an unworthy desire to kick the luckless Bruce, the Master led the pup back to his allotted bench. Bruce trotted cheerily along with a maddening air of having done something to be proud of. Deaf to the Mistress's sympathy and to her timidly voiced protests, the Master scrawled on an envelope-back the words "For Sale. Name Your Own Price," and pinned it on the edge of the bench.
"Here endeth the first lesson in collie-raising, so far as The Place is concerned," he decreed, stalking back to the ringside to watch the rest of the judging.
The Mistress lingered behind, to bestow a furtive consolatory pat upon the disqualified Bruce. Then she joined her husband beside the ring.
It was probably by accident that her skirt brushed sharply against the bench-edge as she went--knocking the "For Sale" sign down into the litter of straw below.
But a well-meaning fellow-exhibitor, across the aisle, saw the bit of paper flutter floorward. This good soul rescued it from the straw and pinned it back in place.
(The world is full of helpful folk. That is perhaps one reason why the Millennium's date is still so indefinite.)An hour later, a man touched the Master on the arm.
"That dog of your, on Bench 48," began the stranger, "the big pup with the 'For Sale' sign on his bench. What do you want for him?"The Mistress was several feet away, talking to the superintendent of the show. Guiltily, yet gratefully, the Master led the would-be purchaser back to the benches, without attracting his wife's notice.
A few minutes afterward he returned to where she and the superintendent were chatting.
"Well," said the Master, trying to steel himself against his wife's possible disappointment, "I found a buyer for Bruce--a Dr.
Halding, from New York. He likes the pup. Says Bruce looks as if he was strong and had lots of endurance. I wonder if he wants him for a sledge-dog. He paid me fifteen dollars for him; and it was a mighty good bargain. I was lucky to get more than a nickel for such a cur."The Master shot forth this speech in almost a single rapid breath. Then, before his wife could reply,--and without daring to look into her troubled eyes,--he discovered an acquaintance on the far side of the ring and bustled off to speak to him. The Master, you see, was a husband, not a hero.