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D.C.—one political crisis after another. Just let Thomas the Tank Engine chug his media-laden way across the city limits, and we’ll face inevitable assault by the armies of Batman, Superman, the Power Rangers, the entire cast of Toy Story, and that notorious antifeminist empress herself, Barbie, who’ll wear either her Joan of Arc outfit or her cute little U.S. Marines uniform, but will waste precious hours deciding between the two, thus giving us time to erect our fortifications of anatomically correct and racially unidentifiable dolls, unembellished blocks, Lincoln Logs, LEGOs, unpainted wooden trains, jars of finger paint, pads of blank paper, and other toys designed to challenge the imagination, boost IQs, and instill in our children the extreme tolerance for unrelenting boredom so vital to success in today’s academic world.
    It was now quarter of five. I placed quick calls to the animal control officers of Cambridge, Arlington, Somerville, and Belmont, on alt of whose voice mail I left my name, my phone number, and the message that a female Siberian husky had been lost near Rindge Avenue in Cambridge. Since Strike had been missing for only a short time, it was premature, I decided, to post flyers and to enlist the aid of the world’s greatest finder of lost dogs, the Internet. As we say here in Cambridge, think globally, act locally.
    Instead of cooking, I ran down the street to Formaggio, a gourmet shop principally renowned for delicious cheeses from all over the world but also notable for fruits, vegetables, and flowers and for rotisserie chicken that has the distinction of not tasting like those freeze-dried poultry strips sold as dog treats. I arrived home to find Kevin Dennehy at my back door. For a person with red hair, blue eyes, fair skin, freckles, and a friendly manner, he is remarkably reminiscent of a silver-back male gorilla. He has the same massive build, including the muscular shoulders, and he sometimes lets his arms swing down as if he were contemplating quadrupedal locomotion, but the main point of likeness is Kevin’s peculiar ability to combine an air of authority with an attitude of curiosity. Kevin would strangle me for describing him as cute, but cute he can be.
    To my amazement, Kevin skipped his usual formulaic greeting (“Hey, Holly, how ya doing?”) and said, “Christ, am I glad to see you. I thought you were dead.”
    “Reports were greatly exaggerated,” I said. “Kevin, I have to feed the dogs, and then I have dog training, but if you’re hungry, I’ve got chicken that I’ll be glad to share.”
    Five minutes later, Kevin was seated at my kitchen table with a can of Bud in front of him and his massive hands clamped over his ears. As I’ve said, he’s cute. The gesture was, however, practical and justified: I was feeding Rowdy, Kimi, and Sammy, which is to say, three exemplary specimens of the most stunningly beautiful, inventively brilliant, and passionately food-driven breed ever to set gorgeous snowshoe paw on the fortunate planet Earth. Rowdy and Kimi were hitched to doors at opposite ends of the kitchen, Sammy was in a wire crate, I was dribbling safflower oil onto a combination of Eagle Pack and EVO in three stainless steel bowls, and all three dogs were screaming, screeching, hollering, bellowing, and bouncing up and down as if their last meal had been weeks ago instead of a mere ten hours earlier. Ages ago, I’d read the report of a small study that compared the behavior of malamute puppies and wolf cubs. Whereas the little wolves showed a healthy interest in meals, the baby malamutes went nuts around the food dish. That’s my paraphrase, of course, but the point is that instead of saying that voracious eaters wolf down dinner, we really ought to say that they malamute it down. Anyway, to show my understanding and respect for the pack hierarchy, I fed Rowdy first, then Kimi, then Sammy. By the time Kimi’s bowl hit the floor, Rowdy was flat on his belly with his