Reeling by Sarah Stonich

Author:Sarah Stonich [Stonich, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC044000 Fiction / Contemporary Women
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press

* * *

Breakfast is eaten at a long table in the mess tent. It’s true that they eat what the dogs do, albeit prepared and served somewhat differently. The dogs get raw lamb with oats, chopped apple cores and egg mixed in. For humans there is a buffet of poached eggs, tepid oatmeal, lamb sausage, and apple fritters. An exception is made for coffee, which is excellent, hot, and served in china cups on saucers, incongruous civility on the grimy slab tables under coils of fly tape fuzzy with insect carcasses.

A German shepherd walks by dragging its low-slung rear end, looking like one of those low-rider cars set down on its chassis. Or two halves of different dogs.

“Is he crippled?” Cassi asks.

“Overbred.” Chad explains how they are purposely bred to achieve dog-show standards.

“But it’s like a birth defect!” RayAnne frowns.

Cassi asks, “Why? Who does that?”

“The people that brought you the dog shows like Westminster, American Kennel Club—dog people, who are anything but, when you get down to it.” Chad ticks off examples of overbreeding: “King Charles spaniels with such tiny skulls they get constant headaches; dachshunds with bodies too long for their legs to support; Boston terriers with eyes that can literally pop out.”

“God.” RayAnne considers the poached egg wobbling on her plate.

When a diminutive, curly-haired woman approaches their table, Chad elbows RayAnne and whispers, “That’s her.”

They stand.

“Sit!” Petra Koslov’s voice belies her size. She speaks with such authority all their bottoms hit the bench in unison.

When RayAnne reaches out to offer a hand, Ms. Koslov shakes her head, saying, “No. We eschew human social refinements here.”

“We do?” Cassi asks.

Rangi’s dimple twitches. “Do we sniff each oth—”

Cassi elbows him.

Petra Koslov gives Rangi a withering look before instructing them as to exactly where they can and cannot go around Kirehe Ranch. Basically, they are grounded.

“Unfortunately, there will be no meeting Uma” (the chinook-fishing vizsla) “until tomorrow. She is still in estrus.”

RayAnne, assuming estrus is a place, asks, “When will she be back?”

“She is . . . on heat.” Ms. Koslov considers RayAnne as if she might be the stupidest woman alive.

“Ah.”

“So . . . not until tomorrow?”

“Uma has been mated daily for the past week. Safe to say she has took by now. Should be fine by tomorrow, if a bit randy.” Ms. Koslov offers nothing else.

So they have another day to kill.

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