it was in february that father and mother began going away from home for three and four days at a time. william usually went with them, but once the master went. each time they came back they brought a bunch of pretty ribbons, blue and red and yellow and white, and william put them in a glass case in the harness room where there were lots more. of course we asked mother where the ribbons came from and she said from the dog shows and told us about them. but we didn’t understand very well. it seemed that the ribbons were prizes given to father and mother because they were such fine dogs, and william and the master and every one was very pleased and proud each time father and mother came home.
father was proud, too. he got more ribbons than mother. i didn’t think that was fair, but mother didn’t seem to mind. after each show father would be very lazy and just lie around and look proud and mother would fetch him bones. but after a day or two father would forget to be proud and find his own bones. it wasn’t much fun for freya and i when father was being proud, because he slept a lot and if we made the least noise mother would say “hush, children! your father is taking a nap and you mustn’t waken him. go somewhere else and play.” so we were glad when the dog shows stopped for a while.
freya and i were to learn about dog shows for ourselves, though. when we were almost a year old william began putting a leash on my collar and freya’s and walking us about. at first i didn’t like it at all. it made me quite nervous to have that strap holding me back. the first time william put it on i stood still and he kept tugging at it and saying “come on, now, fritzie! come on now!” i was quite willing to go with him, but i didn’t like the feeling of that collar up around my ears. still, it didn’t do any good to put my feet out and hold back because william dragged me, and when i found that out i decided i’d run away from him. so i started off in a hurry. but there was that horrid strap, and when i’d gone a little ways my feet went out from under me and i turned a somersault. that frightened me and i ran off in another direction. but each time that leash stopped me. then i began to run around william in circles and howl and presently, when i couldn’t run any more, because the leash was wrapped around william’s legs, i gave a final tug and william fell over on his back in a flower-bed where there were some sweet peas just coming up. he was very angry. i saw that at once and so i tried my best to get away from there. but the more i tried to run the angrier william got. you see, he couldn’t get the strap from around his legs and so he couldn’t get on his feet. and just then i heard the baby clapping her hands and nurse saying “why, william! whatever are you doing there?”
and then william was so surprised and felt so silly that he let go the leash and i pulled it loose and ran as hard as i could run to the stable and crawled behind the flower-pots. but of course he found me and pulled me out. he always did. sometimes now i wonder why i didn’t find a better place to hide in.
well, william had his way in the end and i got so i didn’t mind being on the leash and would walk along ahead of him quite nicely. freya had to learn too. she didn’t mind it as much as i had, but then she never had much spirit. after we got used to the leash william would put a flat box in the middle of the carriage room floor and make us get up on it and stand there for minutes at a time. i didn’t see much fun in that, and at first when he got me on the box i jumped right down again. but he was very—very—now what was it that mother said he was? oh, patient; that was it; very patient. that was what mother called it, but i said he was stubborn.
anyway, he kept at me until i did just what he wanted me to, and after a while i didn’t mind standing on the box, although i couldn’t see much sense in it and it seemed a dreadful waste of time. but mother told us what it was all for, and then i was quite willing to do what william wanted. you see, we were being trained for the dog shows. i thought that was very nice because it meant going on a journey, just as father and mother had, and bringing back a lot of pretty ribbons. father said, though, that if i didn’t behave better than i’d been behaving i wouldn’t get any ribbons. father can be quite gruff at times. freya was so excited about it that she could talk of nothing else.
“won’t it be fine,” she would say, “to be in a show and have hundreds of people admiring you and patting you and saying what a lovely dog you are? i know i shall just love it, fritz!”
girl-dogs are always vain, you see. vanity is not becoming in dogs any more than in two-legged folks and so i growled and said: “i guess no one will look twice at you, miss stuck-up! you’re much too homely.”
that made freya cry and she ran off to ask her mother if it was so. of course she really wasn’t homely. i only said that so she wouldn’t be vain and proud. freya in some ways was a better looking dog than i was. her coat was what the master called “perfectly wonderful.” it was very black and very shiny; just like satin. and her ears were fine and long and silky. and she had nice eyes, too, and a good tail. my tail had a place on the tip where there was no hair. poor william troubled a lot about that spot and rubbed it with grease for weeks and weeks. the grease didn’t seem to do much good, though. perhaps i licked it off too soon. that place never has got quite right and i don’t think it ever will. but even if freya was a little better looking than i, she couldn’t run as fast or dig as deep or do useful things as well as i could. i was lots stronger and bigger. mother said that was as it should be; that girl-dogs were not supposed to be as big and brave and strong as boy-dogs.
well, william taught us all sorts of things that spring. it was a good deal of a bother, but the thought of being taken to the dog show helped me to be patient and go through with it. after we had been in training for a month or more i asked mother when the show was to be and she said she didn’t know; that maybe it wouldn’t come for a long time. i didn’t like that and i had made up my mind that there wasn’t any use in going through with so many lessons if nothing was to come of it when, one morning, the master came down to the stable.
“well, how are they getting on, william?” he asked.
“fair, sir,” said william. “freya takes to it like the lady she is, sir, but young fritz is slower. he’s as stubborn as his father, sir.”
now i thought that very unkind of william after all the trouble i had taken to please him, and just to show that my feelings were hurt i sneaked off and got behind the flower-pots. but i could hear what they were saying in the carriage room, and pretty soon the master said:
“well, i think we’ll try them out at the oak cliff show in june. it’s nearby and there’s only one day of it. they’re bound to be nervous the first time and a small show is a good one to start them with.”
i pricked up my ears at that, because it was already the last of may, and crawled out from back of the flower-pots.
