Her mother winced. Her insurance premiums had gone up after the last claim. ʺNo,ʺ she said firmly. ʺIt would not bark. It would be asleep on your bed, and your bedroom’s on the wrong side of the house.ʺ
ʺWhat do you have against dogs?ʺ said Miri. ʺYou like animals. We even have guinea pigs because when the Stantons emigrated to Australia they didn’t have anyone to give them to so they gave them to us. We have tortoises because that stupid man at Dad’s office thought they could live in the fish tanks, and Dad’s as bad as you are and couldn’t say no.ʺ Her dad cleaned the tortoise cages. Miri only mucked out warm-blooded animals.
Her mother sighed. ʺDogs are too much like horses—I mean the kind of care they need. They’re not all like Fay. Fay wouldn’t be like Fay, except Nora has put a huge amount of work into her. Cats will almost look after themselves, if there’s enough space for them to keep themselves amused in.ʺ
Miri didn’t say anything. Space to keep themselves amused in, in Miri’s experience of cats, was under some human’s feet, and what about the cat food? If all the money for cat food went to dog food, they could have two dogs. Two large dogs. But it wasn’t that she didn’t want not to have cats. She felt there was a principle of fair play involved.
ʺDogs you have to do things for. You have to train them, and you have to know where they are all the time. You have to be there for a dog.ʺ
ʺWe are here. We’re always here. We’re going to be here forever.ʺ
Jane gave her a harassed look. It was true they hadn’t been away on a vacation in four years, since their last barn-sitter had left without warning after two days. Their stall-cleaner had arrived the next morning and found the barns closed and dark, and the horses still waiting for breakfast. (Also the cats, the fish, the tree frogs and the tortoises. Four years ago had been before either the guinea pigs or the parrot, Dorothy. Miri rather thought that her brother would never be able to go on vacation again, and wondered what any possible future wife would think about a parrot going on the honeymoon with them. He’d lost at least one girlfriend already on account of Dorothy: a happy, contented African grey is both jealous and demanding, and Dorothy recognized a challenger and behaved accordingly.)
ʺHoney . . . are you still sure you want to work here full-time after you graduate from high school? Including living at home and all? Because you know I can’t afford to pay you enough to let you move out.ʺ Miri knew. Her dad did the books, and was always trying to make both her and Jane pay more attention. She also knew because when she was still too young to be much use, they’d had live-in barn help. Her family had quite a few live-in barn help stories too.
ʺMom, it’s a dead issue. We’ve got all these plans for what we’re going to do once I’m here full-time, remember?ʺ
Her mother laughed. ʺI remember only too well. With you working twenty-four hours a day we’re going to have the money to build an indoor arena in three years. I feel I must have brain-washed you or something. Kids are supposed to want to grow up and leave.ʺ
ʺAnd I want to grow up and stay. You didn’t brainwash me, you just gave me all your DNA.ʺ It was a family joke that Miri was her mother’s clone: they were both small, dark, tough, compact, horse-obsessed, and couldn’t add a column of figures to save their lives.
ʺWell, here’s my best offer, then. The day after you graduate from high school, you can get yourself a dog.ʺ
◆ ◆ ◆
It took her almost a week after graduation to make time to go to the dog pound. The primary school got out a week before the high school did, and the barn was immediately deluged with little kids wanting extra lessons. Miri was good with kids, especially the ones torn between adoring horses and being scared to death of them. Some of these then transferred their adoration to Miri, and would only take lessons from her. Every time she looked at her schedule for a space to shoehorn another lesson in, she thought of the indoor arena, and found time.
She knew her mother was hoping she’d forgotten about the dog . . . but that Jane also knew her well enough to know that she would not forget.
So one day—finally—at lunch she said, ʺCarol’s mom cancelled, poor Carol’s sick, and I moved Harriet to last thing. If you can spare me, I’m going to the pound this afternoon.ʺ
Jane gallantly refrained from sighing, and said immediately, ʺOf course we can spare you. Remember to buy dog food on the way home.ʺ
Miri suppressed a grin. Her mother also knew her well enough to know that if there was no farm dog by dinnertime, it could only be that a roc had stooped from nowhere, picked up the car with Miri in it, and was bearing them away to an unknown island in the Pacific.
She drove very carefully on the way to the pound. She had had her license from the moment she was old enough to be legal, and had been efficiently backing horse trailers around corners at the farm some time before that; it wasn’t the driving. It was that today was a special day. Today she’d have—she’d finally have—a dog. It wasn’t even only the dog: this would be the first time she’d done something clearly, absolutely, definitively hers. She loved the farm and the riding stable, and had every intention of staying there for the rest of her life. (She even had the site picked out to build her own house on, if she managed to acquire a husband who had a job that earned genuine money so they could afford to. But the site was only on the other side of the driveway plus a few trees from the old farmhouse. There was six A.M. breakfast for horses to think about, and you wanted to be within earshot for sounds of trouble.) And budgeting for the indoor arena was her idea (maybe she had one or two of her father’s genes after all), but it was still something she was doing with her mother. A dog would in a way be the first step toward making the riding stable genuinely individually hers too.
Ronnie was behind the counter at reception. ʺSo, how does it feel to be a grown-up and have to start paying your own bills?ʺ he said jovially. Ronnie coached the local Little League team Mal had been on, and had six dogs of his own, all from the pound. He tended to specialize in the hard-to-place ones, so he had three-legged dogs, blind dogs, old dogs and hyperactive incontinent dogs. He also had a very patient wife.
ʺIt feels okay. I’m only working forty-two hours a day for seventy-five cents an hour—that’s pretty good, isn’t it?ʺ
Ronnie whistled. ʺYour mother’s getting soft.ʺ
ʺYes, that’s what I thought. So I decided I’d better get a dog fast before she tightens up.ʺ
ʺGood plan.ʺ He lifted the end of the counter and came out. ʺI’ll take you round. Do you have any idea what you’re looking for?ʺ
ʺNot really. Something that can put up with a lot of cats and people and won’t chase horses.ʺ
The pound was nearly full, so there were a lot of dogs to look at. And most of them were barking. Miri began to think there were more advantages to cats than she’d realized. Her head started to hurt, and it was hard to look at each dog, especially the barking ones. But shouldn’t she want a dog that barked? In case it happened to be on the right side of the house the next time someone tried to break into the tack room.
They turned down a row of large runs. ʺI also don’t want anything that it takes two days’ salary to feed for one day,ʺ said Miri, as something that looked like a cross between a St. Bernard and a Shire horse shambled up to the front of its run to look them over.
ʺThey’re not all like Marigold,ʺ said Ronnie. ʺSome of ’em are just tall.ʺ