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judges either don’t read the standard or don’t recognize it even when it materializes in the ring. You’ve seen Rowdy, right? You’ve seen him move ? Incredible dog. The standard incarnate.
    But the point about Doug and his father isn’t that Doug had a major fault in terms of the standard for human beings, because there isn’t any one standard for all of us. There couldn’t be, any more than there could be a single standard for Saint Bernards, Bernese mountain dogs, Chihuahuas, and all the others. We don’t vary in size and shape as radically as dogs do, but in our own way, we’re equally diverse, aren’t we?
    Am I making myself clear? Suppose the standard you’re using is for the Great Dane, when, in reality, your dog is a Chesapeake Bay retriever. Enter kennel blindness. Love that dog enough and before long, you’re going to convince yourself that, according to the standard, your Chessie is a flawless specimen of an entirely different breed. Maybe he is faultless, but that’s not the point. The point is that you’re using the wrong standard.
    And if your Chessie has the option of barking out the truth? That you’ve made a fool of yourself? That you don’t know the first thing about your own dog? Caught in that situation, any Chessie with any sense is going to worry that if you find out, you’ll be heartbroken. Maybe you’ll even decide that you don’t want a Chessie at all. Maybe you never liked Chessies, or never thought you did, anyway. Maybe the shock will be more than you can take. So if your Chessie really loves you? And knows how much you need him? Well, then, maybe he’s going to act just like Doug. He’s going to let you go right on admiring your perfect Great Dane.
     

6
     
     Late on a Friday afternoon a couple of weeks after the Essex County show, the dogs and I were heading back from the river. According to Rowdy and Kimi, we were supposed to be retracing our steps and taking the direct route by following Appleton Street from where it begins, at Brattle Street, to where it ends, at Concord Avenue, home being 256 Concord Avenue, the bam red house at the corner of Appleton. I, however, had led us to Fayerweather and then onto Reservoir Street. Just when Rowdy and Kimi had more or less reconciled themselves to Reservoir, though, we came to the intersection with Highland Street, where they balked and I coaxed. Highland Street was not one of the direct routes home, I conceded. Highland did, however, intersect with Appleton, I added, and it happened to be where Morris Lamb had lived. Furthermore, I felt like walking down it, and we were damned well going to do so. Malamutes might worship monotony, I said; I did not. If I decided that this was the way we were going, then this was the way we were going, and that was that. The dogs continued to balk. Then I reached into my pocket, pulled out a fistful of freeze-dried liver, smacked my lips, and, having firmly reestablished myself as the alpha leader of the pack, made the turn onto Highland with Rowdy and Kimi bouncing and leaping along beside me. You think I’m kidding? Alpha means the one who gets her own way.
    After Rowdy and Kimi had swallowed the liver, they threw me a few more of those bipeds-are-so-stupid looks, but soon got distracted by the olfactory traces of a dog who’d left his mark so high up on the trees and fences that Rowdy and Kimi, who aren’t exactly minis, nearly toppled over trying to cover his scent with theirs. Irish wolfhound? Great Dane? My dogs lingered at shrubs and pressed their noses together at tree trunks as if to share information about the big fellow and decide what to do about him. Meanwhile, I looked around. Dog-walking makes the perfect excuse to linger in neighborhoods that are tonier than you are.
    Highland runs parallel to Brattle for two long blocks —Sparks to Appleton, Appleton to Reservoir. Like Brattle, it has houses that the inhabitants might justifiably refer to as mansions, but never do. Off