U Is for Undertow (Kinsey Millhone 21)

“How long did your son have the dog?”

“Not much more than a year. Liam was in his biker phase and probably sold dope, though I never pressed him on the subject. He would have lied if I had so what’s the point? He bought the dog from a guy who had a litter of six in the back of his pickup truck. I guess if you deal drugs, owning a wolfdog lends you a certain dangerous air. They’re aggressive and predatory and they have those eerie gold eyes that look straight into your soul. Hold on. I’ll show you something.”

He got up and crossed the room to a carved oak breakfront he was using as a catchall—keys, junk mail, tools, paperbacks, a silver tea set with the creamer missing. He picked up a framed color photograph, looking at it for a moment before he crossed the room again and handed it to me. “That’s the two of them.”

I angled the photo to eliminate the glare. Liam must have inherited his mother’s coloring. Unlike his father, he was dark-haired and dark-eyed. He did have his father’s physique in a lighter body style. He wore a black leather jacket, jeans, and black boots. He was hunkered beside the young dog, which stood facing the camera with a wary air of intelligence. He looked like a German shepherd except that his torso was slimmer and his legs were longer. His coat was medium length and appeared rough, a grizzled black with layers of gray near his head. The mask of white across his face attested to the strong genetic presence of wolf.

“He’s beautiful. The name, Ulf, as in ‘wolf’?”

Flannagan smiled. “Liam came up with that. He was just a little fluff ball when he got him. Six weeks old. Even as a pup, he was a handful. I never once heard him bark, but when he howled, even as a baby, it would raise the hair on the back of your neck. Dog like that is always testing—the more wolf, the more testing. Liam was alpha male, which meant when he died, no one else could really handle the dog.”

“So he reverted to you?”

“That’s about the size of it. Wolves are pack animals. They have a clear social structure. There’s only room for one leader, and it better be you. You want alpha status with a dog like that; you have to teach him he’s subordinate. You don’t play tug-of-war with him. He doesn’t sleep on your bed. You go through the door first and he eats when you say so and not a minute before. With Liam gone and me stepping in after the fact, there was no way the dog would accept me as dominant. I tried to treat him as Liam had, but he wasn’t impressed. He put up with me. Beyond that, he obeyed if he felt like it, and the rest was my problem.”

“Must have been a strange relationship.”

“I’m not sure he ever felt much for me, but I admired him and I was grateful for his tolerance. My biggest problem was finding a vet willing to treat him. A lot of vets won’t do it. There’s no approved rabies vaccine for the breed so if the dog bites someone, the county will insist on putting him down, no ifs, ands, or buts. In some states it’s illegal to own a wolfdog. I’m not sure what the California law was back then, but I remember Liam saying when you take a wolfdog to a new vet, to be on the safe side, you claim he’s a husky or half malamute.

“That turned out to be a nonissue with Ulf. He developed what I thought was hip dysplasia, meaning the joint was unstable and started causing him pain. By the time he was four years old, the suffering was so acute he could barely get around. I’m not that good a liar so I made a lot of calls before I finally found a vet who’d see him. He suggested I drop him at the office so he could sedate the dog and take X-rays. Sedation’s a risky business with wolfdogs, but he said he understood and he’d be cautious about the dosage. Anyway, I drove him up to Santa Teresa.

“While Ulf was still under, the doc called and told me it wasn’t hip dysplasia at all. We were looking at osteosarcoma, a malignant tumor in the bone. In a young dog like Ulf, the tumor is usually fast-spreading and survival time is short. Amputation was a possibility, but I couldn’t see it with a dog like him. The vet offered to show me X-rays if I needed to be convinced, but I believed him. He recommended euthanization and I agreed.”

He lowered his head and then pinched the bridge of his nose and let the air out of his lungs. “Shit. I know I did the right thing. Own an animal and you’re responsible for his comfort and safety. You do what you have to do, even if it breaks your heart. But I should have been with him. Losing that dog was like losing Liam all over again. I couldn’t handle it. I should have driven back up there, even if he was already sedated and wasn’t aware of what was going on. Instead, I told the vet to get on with it. I told him to just take care of it and when I hung up the phone, I stood here and wept. It was cowardly. He was a noble animal. I should have held him while he died. I owed him that and Liam, too.”