Read The Wicked Flea for Free Online

interest in him.
    “We used to have a husky here,” said the woman in purple, “but he got run over.”
    The woman in blue corrected her. “This is a mala-mute. Isn’t he?”
    “Yes,” I said.
    “You might want to think about getting him neutered.”
    “He’s a show dog.” I could’ve elaborated by sharing the news that a highly esteemed breeder of malamutes who lived in the state of Washington had just E-mailed me, inquiring about the possibility of using Rowdy at stud. The breeder, Cindy Neely, also happened to be a friend of mine and a fellow soldier in the trenches of malamute rescue. That is, Cindy and I devoted the spare time we didn’t have to finding homes for homeless malamutes. In that case, why breed more mala-mutes? Where else were healthy, correct dogs like hers and mine supposed to come from? But I digress.
    “You can let Rowdy loose,” the woman informed me. “There’s a leash law, sort of, but the dogs always play here, and people turn a blind eye, more or less. Lately, it’s been less, but no one minds this early. Rowdy is beautiful. I’m sure he wins all the time.”
    Pet people! There isn’t a show dog on earth who wins all the time. Still, I intended to thank her and to say something nice about the dogs romping in the field, but before I had a chance, Ceci said, “Holly has two malamutes, a male and a female, the girl is Kimi, and we’ll have to get Holly to bring her here sometime, too, she’s a sweetheart, but the point is that Holly knows everything about dogs, and she’s going to solve all our problems with Zsa Zsa.”
    I do know some things about dogs. For example, I understood that Rowdy was at that moment allowing Quest to sniff his big rear paws only because Quest was an imaginary dog and thus wasn’t there. “What I know is far from everything,” I protested. “But Ceci was telling me about the problem, and she thought it might help to have a fresh perspective.”
    “We were just talking about Zsa Zsa,” Noah said. The woman in yellow laughed. “She’s all we ever talk about!”
    “That’s not true,” objected the woman in purple. “We talk about how well all the other dogs get along. Chomsky—he’s the wheaten—is the most selfdirected. He pretty much does his own thing around the other dogs, on the periphery, and he likes them, but after he runs with them for a few minutes, he loses interest. And then he sniffs things.”
    “I’ve deprived Chomsky of the benefit of siblings,” explained the woman in yellow. “He’s an only child, so he’s had to learn to entertain himself. Aren’t you going to let Rowdy play?”
    “He isn’t necessarily good with other dogs,” I said apologetically, meaning that the handsome boy was my life’s blood, and I didn’t want his flowing in the street after he’d been hit by a car.
    “Unsocialized,” the woman said matter-of-factly. OBEDIENCE-TITLED-CANINE-GOOD-CITIZEN-BREED-CHAMPION-BREEDING-QUALITY-CERTIFIED-THERAPY-DOG! I wanted to reply just like that! Hyphenated, all one word, all capital letters, one long, loud, dog-proud brag. But like Rowdy and Kimi, I am socialized. Also, her wheaten, Chomsky, was peacefully wandering around off leash without getting into dog fights or any other trouble, and in that limited sphere of behavior, he probably was superior to Rowdy. Not that there’s so much as a competitive metatarsal in my body, but as a dog show type, I find myself oddly reluctant to enter a My Dog’s Better Than Your Dog contest that my dog is bound to lose.
    “There you have it.” Noah spoke with the cadence of a radio preacher. “Dogs that come to the park and socialize all learn to get along together.” He didn’t actually finish with amen, but the word hung in the air all the same. Could he really be a minister? The Gospel dog names—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Jonna— sounded a bit blasphemous even to me, but maybe the intention had been devout. In any case, the loose dogs seemed to support his