When a local vet and a pampered pet disappear, Holly Winter and her veterinarian lover Steve Delaney go to the exclusive Cambridge Dog Training Club to investigate. "It is Carmichael’s scenic descriptions of the northern Arizona setting, insider’s peek into the world of therapy pets and loveable characters, both human and otherwise, that make this lighthearted romp worth savoring." -- Publishers Weekly "It is Carmichael’s scenic descriptions of the northern Arizona setting, insider’s peek into the world of therapy pets and loveable characters, both human and otherwise, that make this lighthearted romp worth savoring." -- Publishers Weekly Susan Conant, a three-time recipient of the Maxwell Award for Fiction Writing given by the Dog Writers Association of America, lives in Newton, Massachusetts, with her husband. She is the author of nineteen Dog Lover’s Mysteries. 1   If your name is Holly Winter, Yuletide can be a real bitch. When I say bitch, I know what I’m talking about. I earn my living in the world of dogs. In the pages of Dog’s Life magazine, including the pages occupied by my column, bitch is a neutral word for “female dog,” and when I tell you that I have two Alaskan malamutes, Rowdy and Kimi, a dog and bitch, I’m not swearing. But Holly Winter? In December?   I make the best of it. Take Christmas cards. If your name sounds like an ecumenical version of Merry Christmas, you don’t have to wish anyone Season’s Greetings, Happy Holidays, or Health and Happiness Now and in the Coming Year. You just sign in the white space below the picture of your spectacular dogs. In this year’s picture, the best ever, Rowdy and Kimi are wearing snazzy red harnesses, and they’re pulling their sled across a field of snow. The sled is piled with red-blanket stand-ins for bags of toys. The dogs’ plumy white tails are waving over their backs, and their big red tongues are hanging out of their eager, grinning faces. Festive and woofy.   In case you wondered, I would like to add that Rowdy and Kimi are certainly not wearing those humiliatingly stupid reindeer-antler headbands you can order from R.C. Steele, New England Serum, J-B, and the other discount pet-supply houses. My picture doesn’t reveal the detail, but the dogs have on Velcro-fastened red velvet bow-tie collars that I copied from the ones in the R.C. Steele catalog. The originals cost about twelve dollars apiece, and I whipped up Rowdy and Kimi’s for practically nothing. The R.C. Steele version, though, is presumably durable. My homemade collars were starting to fray by mid-December, when the dogs had worn their finery only twice, once for the Christmas card photo and once for pictures with Santa. And, no, I did not drag my dogs to some shopping mall to wait in line with the kiddies. The occasion, it so happens, was a benefit for the Animal Rescue League.   As I was saying, to preserve the velvet collars for Christmas, I was saving them for special occasions, one of which was Rowdy and Kimi’s visit to the vet for rabies boosters. The fancy dress wasn’t mandatory—you don’t really have to get spiffed up for church or temple, either—but I warn you: Ministers, priests, and rabbis may overlook dirty, ragged coats, tartar-encrusted teeth, untrimmed nails, and unswabbed ears, but veterinarians do not. All creatures bright and beautiful?   The late afternoon Boston commuter traffic zooming along in both directions in front of the clinic was so ferocious that I stopped wondering whether my Bronco would get hit before I could make the turn and instead tried to decide whether we’d get front-ended, rear-ended, or sideswiped. I suddenly wished I’d crated the dogs instead of leaving them loose behind the wagon barrier. When a break came, I slammed my foot on the accelerator and roared into the parking lot. Ms. Evel Knievel.   I’d just killed the engine, scooped up the ribbon collars, and opened my door when a bright, educated voice rang out my name. A lot of Cambridge women have those classical-music-station voices. Maybe they’re what you get for a big donation to National Public Radio. For a pledge of a hundred dollars or more, you get an NPR voice or a radiotelegraphically correct sweatshirt. My friend and tenant Rita’s friend Deborah must’ve forked up twice: She never left home without the voice, but on that unseasonably warm December day, she also wore one of the sweatshirts. Deborah’s skin is either naturally oily or heavily moisturized. Some stylist must’ve promised her that with a body perm, she could just wash her brown hair and then forget it. Forget it? Whenever Deborah looked in the mirror, she must have noticed that sprouting from her scalp were the crisp liver-colored ringlets of an Irish water spaniel. I mean, how could she forget a thing like that? The woman with Deborah had very short, dark, distinctly human hair and wore a red jersey outfit I’d admired when I’d seen it in the window of Pirjo, a tiny place on Huron Avenue where I can’t afford to sh