by Babe's authoritarian manner. As the
"yard general," she spent a lifetime policing cows
and pigs that wandered in from the pasture or out of the pens.
And, as official farm yard greeter, she met all strangers with
an erect, bristly, unwagging tail and unsmiling, snaky eyes that
kept most newcomers in their vehicles with doors closed and windows
up until someone more friendly would finally free them.
When she first met my German shorthair pointers, in 10 seconds,
Babe laid out the ground rules. "No nose-touching, no butt-sniffing,
no up-close crowding." The message, delivered with one quick
ear bite or a savage snarl, neither of my dogs, nor most others,
ever had much problem remembering.
Out in the field after ringnecks, Babe was all business, her
nose always to the ground in knee-high hayfields, head-high sloughs,
elephant-eye high cornfields, and sky-high shelterbelts. "Follow
Babe, she's on a pheasant," someone would say and everyone
with a shotgun would shoot to attention, find the dog, and get
as close to her as possible.
I usually tried to keep my German shorthairs away from Babe saying
that a "flushing dog" was a "bad influence"
on my pointers whose job it was to point pheasants not necessarily
"push them up" and force them into flight. That was
my story anyhow, though I have to confess to another part of
my reason for not working my dogs with Babe was that she often
made them look bad.
Too often the fleet-footed, fast-moving pointers would go running
off in some high-velocity pheasant-finding-frenzy, while old
Babe, plodding along at a low-speed, first-gear, four-wheel-drive
rate, would flush two hens and a rooster. And, almost always
in places my racing |
canines should have covered. "Yeah,
old Babe is a bad influence on my German shorthairs," I
would repeat. Though no one who watched and knew could believe
it.
"How did Babe get to be such a good pheasant dog?"
someone would ask Larry. "By accident," was his standard
answer. "One opening day of the pheasant season when Babe
was still a puppy, she followed us into a cut cornfield - and
just started hunting The first bird she flushed was a rooster
that someone shot and Babe retrieved. And the rest is history,"
Larry would add.
Of course, he left out the part where Babe could hunt pheasants
on her own any day of the year, disappearing sometimes for hours
as she roamed the fields around the farmyard. Or walked the creek
bottom behind the house. Or searched the mile square ocean of
CRP across the road. Or ran ahead of the combine through mid-summer
winter wheat. Always and naturally finding pheasants. |
Though born as a "retriever,"
Babe wasn't much of one - except on pheasants. Under some duress
and with some pleading, she might retrieve a mallard from a farm
pond or a honker from corn stubble, however, she would do so
without enthusiasm. For Babe there was no joy in water or wetness
or the cold that went with them. Retrieving ringneck roosters,
however, was an entirely different matter with dead birds, a
dead cinch at being found and delivered no matter how deep and
thick the cover.
Any wounded ringneck, likewise, would be in trouble with Babe
on it's tail, tracking the bird for many minutes and what seemed
like miles when necessary. "When Babe goes after a winged
rooster," Larry used to say, "break out a sandwich
or bring a book to read while she's gone because it might take
a while for her to get back with the bird." And every time
she would go, it seemed, she would come back with what she went
after. |
