They may be only a small portion of any
given hunting season so two birds, one a pheasant rooster the
other a mallard hen, do not a gun dog make.
But a couple pieces of good dog work does make the time, training
effort and feed that goes into developing a genuine hunting retriever,
(reliable for both upland and waterfowl work) not only justifiable
but memorable. They are also an assurance that even if circumstances
and laziness cause failure to polish and put on the finishing
touches, a hunter already has a gunning companion to be coveted.
In the first instance, while figuring I'd be getting off a shot
at a woodcock or ruffed grouse, despite the cover I was sure
by her manner of going that Zoe, a young black Labrador bitch,
was working a pheasant. She was hot! Tail swirling, twisting,
doubling back.
But she produced nothing out of the mix of dry marsh grass, tag
elder, willow and red oiser; which was surprising for her because
she is deadly on birds but excusable, considering the bone dry
autumn that prevailed prior to and during that Wisconsin bird
season.
When she came out to the cover's edge path I was strolling along
I knew better than to accuse Zoe of giving up. There is no quit
in this bitch. Highly intelligent and super-charged, maybe I
got her dirt cheap |
at a year of age because, by some standards,
she's hyper. But she's always ready to go, doesn't run out of
gas, really wants to please but struggles to obey because she's
so full of herself.
I have no problem with a hunter or trainer who will put up with
a placid, essentially dull dog because that type will respond
to stringently applied mechanical routines that achieve robot-like
response but fails to ignite the excitement that glows like a
halo over dog naturally driven to go out and make some birds
even where none exist.
It is a remarkable thing that some trainers can take in a stream
of dogs, divergent in what might be variously described as personality,
temperament or character, and mold them into uniformly efficient
performers, virtually peas-in-the-pod performing tasks in a prescribed,
predictable way. Since I prefer the zest and enough independent
spice to risk disaster, I have shrugged off proscriptions by
trainer brethren who categorize some my favorite hunting dogs
as "near outlaws."  |
Other friends, who put up with or actually
get a kick out of the way my best dogs work, are prone to refer
to the more sedate as "cookie cutter" dogs, apparently
all out of the same ho-hum mold.
But when you mess with a lot of different dogs, you flip-flop
back and forth between the debate over accenting and riding with
the natural and the positive verses molding the raw material
into instant response via close order drill. Pondering such differences
in opinion as Zoe bolted up the path ahead of me, it occurred
to me "the other guys" had a point. She should have
been methodically beating the cover, quartering close in, on
both sides of the path instead of making an almost pointing dog-like
cast.
Almost simultaneous with making that concession I automatically
shifted into a higher gear in order to close the gap between
the black dog and the shotgun, stimulated enough to temporarily
shed the shackles of parental discipline imposed upon me by Mother
Nature |
