The very uneventfulness of the dogs’ reunion marked their subjection to their destiny.
To the tense dynamic playing out between the US and the Soviet Union. Or, perhaps, to Truman’s and Stalin’s intense personal hatred of each other.
The hand of fate played in its fickle way with Bad News’s children elsewhere too, not only on the Korean Peninsula.
In autumn 1951, in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois, a female dog started giving birth to puppies that would have a shot at the top. Her name was Sumer, and she was a sister by the same mother of Gospel and Jubilee, then fighting on the Korean Peninsula. Sumer had never been sent to the front. She wasn’t an elite dog—in fact, she wasn’t even a war dog. She was tested when she was six months old, and she had failed. Naturally each puppy in a litter has its own character and abilities, even though it and its siblings are born of the same seed. By the close of 1949, Bad News had fathered some 277 puppies; of that total no more than 150 were judged appropriate for military use—though among those who were, a good half proved to be extraordinarily capable on the battlefield. Most of the pups that were rejected—on the grounds that they were too friendly, say, or too excitable—were given away for free to ordinary households, or sometimes sold for a small sum. And there were buyers. These were purebred German shepherds, after all. They might not have been suited for war, but they were certified purebreds. And they were pups, and they were adorable.
So that’s how it was. The puppies scattered. They left the training center kennels behind and went out into the great wide world to live their lives as ordinary pets.
Sumer, however, ended up in another large kennel like the one she had left. Caged.
Her owner was a young woman who maintained the kennel at her own expense. She was a breeder, though more often she referred to herself as a handler. She brought her dogs to shows, walked them around the ring. Held their leashes, handled them. The “shows” were, of course, dog shows. She was a regular at venues all across the United States, an up-and-coming breeder whose dogs took, and continued to take, prize after prize.
She had first become interested in the puppies that didn’t make the grade as war dogs—second-generation rejects, so to speak—two years earlier, and by now she had acquired twenty-four by this route. She treasured them. These rejects might not have had what it took to succeed as war dogs, but they came from an extremely attractive lineage; they might have been tossed out as failures in the world of military breeding, but they were ideally suited to dog shows that were focused, above all, on bodily form. When the military breeders branded these dogs as “standard but useless,” they were in fact certifying that they possessed the fine external appearance that was most valued in the dog shows, and that was, more than anything, what it took to make a dog a king.
Unmistakably pure, perfectly proportioned.
Unadulterated formal beauty.
Of the twenty-four puppies the woman acquired, half were Bad News’s children. Sumer was by far the most beautiful. She was hopeless as a war dog, true, but she was outstanding as a plaything, a pet. Such a gorgeous coat, the handler murmured. Just look at how perfect her bite is. At the same time, the handler had also spotted her weaknesses. She had been doing this ever since she graduated from high school, an up-and-coming breeder, a twenty-five-year-old pro. She entered Sumer in several local shows, to see how she would do, but the best she ever placed was third in her group. No surprise there, the handler thought. She needs a bit more pizzazz, a sort of a sensuousness, something to catch the judge’s eyes. If only the handler could bring that out, she would have a perfect champion dog.
She would have, that is, a brand.
Just one more step.
In order to bring out what she needed, the handler started breeding Sumer. If only this last step could be achieved with this bitch, the next generation would be able to take the grand prize at any dog show in the land. And so Sumer began giving birth to litter after litter by different fathers, twice every year. She was given all the care she needed so she could focus on raising her children.
The dogs who straddled Sumer over the next five years were all certified purebred German shepherds. She had intercourse with seven different dogs, but every one of the puppies that emerged from her womb belonged to the same breed.
The purity of her blood was preserved.
The German shepherd line continued unadulterated. But what of the other dogs?
Dogs, you dogs in Kita’s line, where are you now?
Most of your number—124 by the end of 1949—remained in Far North Alaska. You were pulling sleds. Half the blood coursing through your veins derived from the Hokkaido breed; half came from other Northern breeds. You were mongrels, every one of you. But you were a mongrel aristocracy—the sons and daughters of Kita, the greatest sled-racing hero of the late 1940s—and as such everyone in the region associated in any way with sled racing knew of your existence. You were nobility, and you were priced accordingly. You might fetch two hundred, five hundred, even a thousand dollars. And you found buyers, every one of you. A few dozen ambitious mushers, new faces in the evolving world of dog sledding, shelled out the cash and bought you. One day you would be their lead dogs.
You were dispersed. Mostly around Alaska and the Arctic Circle.
And you mongrelized your line ever further.
One dog left the territory behind and descended far to the south. Her name was Ice. Her mother, a Siberian husky, had given her a foxlike face and blue eyes. Her maternal grandmother had a touch of Samoyed blood in her, however, and from her Ice had inherited a snow-white coat of long hair, light and fluffy, especially from the ridge between her shoulders down along her spine. She looked a little like a wild beast you might find roaming the snowfields.
Ice had left the territory over which Kita’s children ruled, it was true, but not by accident—it wasn’t as if she had gotten lost. Though in the end, she might as well have been lost. That, more or less, was her fate… but that wasn’t how it began. The musher who bought her realized it would be foolish for someone so inexperienced—and his new team of sled dogs, with Ice at its head—to commit to an endurance race without adequate preparation, so he made the wise decision to enter his team in shorter competitions. That, at any rate, was what he did the first two winters. And they did impressively well. Ice was the master of her team, she took pride in her leadership, skillfully kept the other dogs in line. And so they moved on to the next stage. In January 1953, Ice went south—or, rather, was taken south—to participate in a competition in Minnesota. Her master always picked races he was convinced they could win, but he had never actually taken the prize. The competition was too stiff in Alaska, in both the American and the Canadian regions. Ice had far too many worthy opponents. There was no guarantee that she would emerge supreme. But her master wanted that, he wanted it so badly… He wanted her to be recognized as a winner in a short- to mid-distance race, and then, if possible, to make a dazzling debut in the world of long-distance racing. Consumed with ambition, Ice’s master searched for just the right race. And he found it. In the snowy Minnesota highlands, where dog sledding was just catching on as a winter sport. Just below the border with Canada.
Who would ever take a real team that far?
No one.
No one but me.
So he rented a truck and drove his twelve dogs down.
In January, Ice and her team attempted the three-hundred-mile Minnesota Dog Sled Marathon. The dogs were in mint physical condition and they encountered no particular difficulties along the way, but still they came in second, losing by fifteen minutes. Ice and the other dogs expected their master to shower them with praise, since second place was still awfully good, but he was clearly disappointed; his shoulders drooped. They got no medal, no prize money—he couldn’t even cover the cost of transporting the dogs. He had screwed up. He was overcome by despair. And then, two days later, he was over it. He had met the woman he was destined for. She was twenty-eight years old and single and lived eighteen miles south of Minneapolis. She didn’t have any dogs. She had, instead, twenty cats that lived with her in a house on land inherited from an aunt. They exchanged glances, for no particular reason, and they realized in a flash that they had been in love in some previous life, and that was that. They got married. The musher moved in with her, bringing his twelve sled dogs, and he put down big, thick roots in Minnesota. He didn’t care about racing anymore. Winning, losing. So what? Love was all that mattered. Medals and prize money? Pshaw—all you need is love. No more of this dog sledding shit for him.