life was passing him by on the wings of
each fog-bound bird.
"Hush now," the hunter said, reaching over the short
space between them to touch the Lab's ear. He rubbed its leathery
tip with his thumb and forefinger. "Stay quiet." His
voice stroked the dog as softly as his fingers. "We haven't
missed a thing." The hunter looked at his dog's head; though
it was obscure in the anemic half-light, he knew its broadly
chiseled detail as well as he knew his own reflection. The head
was solid and honest, like the brain it held and the body behind
it.
Secretly, the man was pleased that the Lab had not lost his puppyish
zeal and free-spirited drive for the hunt during the seven seasons
they had been together. He had seen too many dogs, for too many
sad reasons, without heart for the work. The Labrador at his
side was not one of those dogs. Early on, the retriever had given
himself to the man and to waterfowling, and when they came together
the dog was at his best. And that best had become as good as
the man had ever owned or, likely, would ever own, though he
sometimes lost sight of it in the dog's steady, day-after-day
performance.
The retriever was what he was bred to be-a working gun dog, nothing
more. But then, nothing more was necessary. He had never competed
in a field trial nor run in a hunt test. He had never been in
demand as a stud, nor had anyone tried to buy him. His performance
was workmanlike and reliable, which made it look ordinary. It
was not. He was a hunting dog, which is another way of saying
that beneath the appearance of the commonplace lay the extraordinary.
The Labrador's head twisted upward as a rush of wings broke the
white stillness. Six mallards beat low behind the jumble of driftwood,
out of the marshes, pushed down by the fog and seeking the river.
They passed the dark lumps that were decoys, then disappeared
as though erased by the swipe of a hand. Soft, coercing calls
from the hunter tensed the Lab, sent |
a tremor down his body, and riveted his
eyes ahead into the thin hint of breeze. Another set of chuckles
and the ducks were there, conjured by the calls, backpedaling,
their feet down above the blocks.
The dog's eyes locked on the tumbled drake before it arced to
the water, lost in the fog. He stayed on his mark, wide-eyed
and rigid, until the hunter spoke his name and said, Dead. At
these words, an excitement-driven Yip launched the dog from the
driftwood. Five running leaps and he was in the river, an inky
line rulered from the blind to the spot where he had last seen
the drake. Then he, too, was absorbed by the fog.
"Good boy," the man said, when the Lab had placed the
mallard in his hand. "Good job." He fussed over the
dog, telling him as he had so often, that the Lab was the best
fellow that ever wore a collar. And the hunter meant it.
The man had long ago come to grips with the little Yip that fired
a retrieve, and he accepted the dog's tendency on his returns
to make for the nearest bank and finish the retrieve on land.
Both had become irrelevant. The Lab's marks and lines to downed
birds were arrow-true; if he chose to escape the icy water on
the way back, that was his affair. The man was his only judge,
and he considered it sensible. The dog never dropped a bird,
never paused in his delivery. Only when he had placed a retrieved
duck in his hunter's hand would he relax, shake, and nose the
game he had given up-and given up willingly, without a hint of
reluctance.
This astounded the man. Although he had trained the Lab, watched
him develop, and made the retriever part of his life along with
quite a few others-he was still amazed by the animal's willingness
to go against embedded drives. This dog was steady to shot and
to fall, took signals well, and delivered to hand-when the mindless
instincts of millennia told him to bark and chase, run like hell
after the bird, grab it, and eat |
it on the spot. That he did none of those things, the
man thought, was what made each retrieve a singular and truly
incredible event.
The man understood the behavioral theories and hands-on mechanics
of training; nevertheless, he remained enchanted by quality dog
work with its ritualized choreography of grace and beauty. But
in his mind, the difficulty or style of the retrieves was not
the most remarkable factor in that piece of the hunting equation
called a gun dog. Even at the lowest level of skill, he knew
that there was something far from ordinary underlying each cooperative
performance. The wonder of Labradors was not in superficial judgments
of how well they performed; it was hidden within the dogs, in
the depths of what they did willingly, and why they did it at
all.
Full dawn, such as it was, kicked in on schedule, and the mist,
like a collection of tired night spirits, began to fade beneath
the gaining light. Cottony wisps of fog disappeared from above
the toss of driftwood logs and unraveled over the river. Shapes
hardened and acquired texture. The dark lumps on the water became
bobbing decoys, and shadows etched themselves into the hunter
and his Lab snugged down on a riverbank. For a time, the air
would chill, then slowly yield its grip to a pale sun.
Given the season, it appeared to be an ordinary morning.
We have let you read about ten pages of this 207
page book, for more of the same book simply go to Guldans.com
and buy the book for $23© 2002 A Dog for all Seasons Reprinted
with permission of Countrysport Press, Camden, Maine (www.countrysportpress.com).
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