Archives for May 2014

I see you watching that squirrel on the fence line.  Frozen in place, watching every twitch he makes, waiting oh so patiently for him to make the wrong move.  You are my stealth hunter, my ever-ready back-up dispatcher for sure.  Remember that one time a couple years ago?

It was such a beautiful day, I took the mountain bike out and went on my first ride of the summer.  An hour later, some clouds snuck in, so I took a nap on the sun porch couch while it was raining for about 15 minutes. You were on the cool cement floor right beside me. Then, like magic, the clouds went away, and the porch became so warm it woke us up.  Couldn’t ask for better weather to laze around and rejuvenate from a long hard week—or a better day to eliminate a problem…

Yes, we had a problem, alright.  A very expensive one, and there he is, at it again. A nuisance squirrel on the prowl.  That little sucker has been nesting up in our big tree, sneaking around, tearing up all sorts of stuff on our patio—dug up my $75 newly planted petunias, ripped up my swing canopy for another $300, chewed up my picnic table cover, rooted around and tore up a canvas bag and my bag of potting soil, chewed up part of my wooden bar table, and it’s table cover that I’ll have to replace for another bunch of hundred dollars. But most aggravating is that the destructive vile, rodent chewed a good size hunk out of my $600 hot tub cover, and now that will have to be replaced.

But today, he was not careful.   I caught the bugger sneaking across the hot tub over to the bar table, no doubt to chew up the new table cover I put on there two days ago.

Ha! Busted!  I saw him from the sun porch window, so I jumped up, and headed for the special cabinet.  You knew immediately what was going on, and were right by my side.

“Mama’s getting her gun—oh boy!”  You began prancing; tail wagged with delight.

I grabbed my trusty Olympic air rifle, sped upstairs to the guest room above the porch, quietly stepped out the balcony door, and carefully peered over the edge of the roof.

There he was, perched on my bar table, filling his nasty little cheeks with the new table covering.

My heart was racing, my blood boiling—I’ll fix you, you violator!  Now granted, it isn’t every day I am on my roof with an air gun, but come on, enough is enough here.  The angle was perfect to take a completely safe and discreet shot at the nemesis of my world.  So, I took a calming breath, aimed a steady bead between two hairs, and whacked the b%#*##* !!   His scrawny little body launched into the air, flipping several times, until he hit the concrete next to the hot tub.

Mission accomplished! Snoopy dance! Big sigh of relief.  You spun around and around in a flurry of excitement, not knowing if you should jump off the balcony to fetch him or what. You just knew a wonderful thing happened and wanted to celebrate too.

“Whoa, whoa,” I whispered, holding you back to calm you down.

Wait a minute…what?  As I looked down at the concrete patio, to my great surprise, and despite the fact it was a deadly shot, he is.…he is…still moving! The beast apparently is some sort of mutant, and is managing to drag himself half ways over to the fence line to expire.

I hate that when that happens.

You give me ‘that look’, like ‘just let me go finish him off…’

“Hold on now, Buddy, whoa….no bird…no bird.” I try to convince you to relax. This is between me and Mutant Vile Rodent.

No more sneaking! I bolt back into the house, run downstairs, out the back door, gun held high, pellets in my pocket, determined to pump another round into that nasty critter, calling;

“Buddy, you wait here.” And I slipped out the back door, leaving you in the kitchen. No need for you to think the back yard is a free-for-all hunting grounds.

Dang, Vile Rodent was out of sight. How could I lose him? I begin to search the fence line. Searching, searching, can’t find him–ahh, then I see those beady little eyes twinkling amidst the fire pit wood….

Those beady black eyes.  Cheeks still plump with my property.   I step up to within 10 feet, dropping the next pellet in. WHACKKK! I shoot again. He jolts out from the wood and along the fence line–then actually tries to crawl up my white plastic lattice fence.  I reload once more. WHAAAACK! And he drops like a rock to the ground.  No movement.  Completely still.  Thoroughly expired. Mission accomplished!  The triumphant protector of our home has done it again.  Now it’s time to share the spoils of my victory.  I bring you out from the kitchen, on heel, over to the side of the fence line, only to discover that little sucker was gone again! How could this be? Okay, my lean mean hunting machine partner, it’s time for you to step in for the assist.

“Hunt em up, baby, hunt em up!” I command.  You immediately kick into full bore hunt mode.  Nose to the ground, tracing the exact path the vermin creature took from the exact pinpoint where he first hit the concrete.  Your tail flicking, ears flapping, darting up and down the wood pile and fence line with complete focus.  Mere seconds have passed when boom, you lock up tight on point, peering through the fence.

Oh great. You’re kidding me.  The critter went into the neighbor’s yard to expire.

We could see him lying in the neighbors Snow-On-The-Mountain. They are gone for the weekend.  Still, this posed a whole new problem, as I have 6′ lattice fencing tie-wrapped to the 4’ chain link fence all around the back yard. But now was not the time to back down—–so I grabbed the garden scissors, and ‘snip snip snip’ down came a section of lattice fence. “FETCH!”,

And over the top of that four foot chain link fence you went in one graceful leap, instantly back over the top to me with squirrel in tow…in mouth…well, you know what I mean.

“Give. Good boy, thank you.” You were euphoric.

So was I, actually.

And, problem solved.

Ahhh, another day in the neighborhood. It really doesn’t get much better than that. 

I reattached the lattice on the fence and we went about our day.

Buddy, old boy, I know what you’re thinking.  We are NOT going after that squirrel on the back fence.  Oh, don’t be giving me that look now…..!

There you go, off on a tangent sniff-oh-rama into the weeds again.  Buddy, there is nothing there on the boulevard.  We can barely go three blocks walking, and you are tired, breathing hard, and stopping every 4 steps to sniff imaginary things in the grass.  I know you want to find something to point.  I know you want to find something for me to shoot so you can chase it.  It’s how you’re wired. You’re a natural, after all.

Buddy Boy, I’ll never forget those early days after you came into my life mid-July, at 11months old, with no previous training whatsoever.  A strong willed dog, coupled with a novice owner.  From the beginning I knew it would be interesting to see who was training who.  We had a challenging first couple of weeks, introducing you to the rest of the 4 legged family, just in time to experience the beginnings of an explosive divorce, and finding your place in our new and fragile pack, as the only male.  Once we sustained our injuries, well, the house was quite the circus for a while.  You took it all in stride.

One of the responsibilities of owning a pedigreed hunting dog is following through with their training and official paperwork that carries the line. You and I were under the gun to comply with the first sequence of your documented training–the Natural Ability Test. You had no previous training, I’d only owned you a very short time, you were close to a year old and there were only a few test dates left before it would be too late for you to register as a NAVHDA qualified dog. That meant the two of us needed to buck up, work hard to catch up, and drive to the only location still available–South Dakota–for the test, with our injuries and all.

We got to South Dakota by 6:30 Saturday evening, and stayed over in a lovely dog friendly hotel, so we’d be well rested and ready to test Sunday morning. We pull into a parking lot on that hot windy August morning, where 50 or more guys are milling around with dogs and guns and top of the line Orvis field gear outfits, and I’m not able to locate more than one female in the crowd. It never stops being daunting. As we pull up at the end of the row, the girls mop heads pop up to see out the truck windows, eager to get out and go pee after the long drive to South Dakota. I’m sure when we first got out of our truck the NAVHDA judges were thinking ‘what the hell?’

With a cone around you head, and leg bandaged up, and me with a big green polar fleece cast cover from fingertips up to my elbow—we were loud and clumsy and totally pathetic looking.   They probably thought we were lost.

One thing for certain–it sure is easy to turn a guy’s head with a fine dog at my side. We quickly learned we had to stay quiet, stay by our vehicle and not look in certain directions, not ask questions, and not engage with other dogs and ohhhh it was so hard to behave! But we waited our turn as patiently as possible.   Everyone there was so competitive. Everyone was checking you out. Sure, they probably made their assessments of what they thought we were all about. But they didn’t know our story or where we came from. They didn’t know about our shaky start, my crying sleepless nights with you and the girls curled up around me, your lack of training, my lack of training or how isolated our family was. Their dogs all had been exposed to hundreds of live pheasants from the time they were babies. At 11 months old, you had yet to even see a pheasant, except on TV.

They all thought you were a nice looking dog.  I think the guys were impressed that we showed up at all, both being gimped out. But the cone came off and soon, your “natural ability” kicked in.  It was our turn. We forgot all about our injuries once we got out into the fields.

We walked up to the judges circle to be given an explanation and instructions about the test elements. I was so dreadfully ignorant and nervous.  It didn’t help that you peed on the head judges leg the instant that he identified himself as the guy in charge. Way to start things out.

Test one, field phase—dog is sent into cover where presence of game has been arranged. Tested on use of nose, search, pointing, desire, cooperation, and gun shyness.

It was time to take you off leash and without any control mechanism other than voice or hand control. Oh my we haven’t had time to work on either of those things with confidence.

But I set you loose and you immediately started ranging the field. We hadn’t had time to get to any gun ranges to see how you would react when guns were being shot. I’m the only one who flinched when they shot the gun. How embarrassing THAT was!  But, it was good for a laugh. One judge said “I think he’s livin large”, getting to run a wide open field with his nose in the wind, smelling birds and pointing them. Another pointed out you seemed to not notice your injury at all. You brought tears to my eyes, I was so proud! You pointed a bunch of game birds planted in the grass. You seemed to be struggling on the last point, darting this way and that. We determined that bird was on the run and you were not about to give up on it when suddenly, the bird rose up and flew off right under your nose—you chasing full bore behind it. The bird gained altitude and distance quickly with you in hot pursuit.

“Um, excuse me? Umm…”

“Shhhhhh”. One judge responded. I began to feel faint as I saw your lean body disappear over the horizon line over 200 yards away—gone out of sight.

“Oh my God, what do we do?” I gasped to the judges. They casually looked at each other, then one said “Oh, give him a few minutes, he’ll come back.”

That’s when I broke my silence and admitted I’ve only owned you 30 days. You’ve never been completely off leash before. Now you were several hundred yards out of sight—maybe in the next county. I was so close to tears.  Minutes felt like hours.

“Where is the nearest road from here?” I timidly asked. Then, suddenly, we spotted a flicker of movement on the horizon line. And then another flicker. And then a bigger flicker, and then, there it was—what appeared to be a head. A head and shoulders. A head and shoulders, with something else, getting closer. It was you, barreling back towards me, with something in your mouth. THE BIRD! My good boy successfully retrieved that bird over 200 yards away and brought it right to me (which you didn’t have to do!).

You know you made an impression on the judges with that little exhibition as they all started writing on their notepads with smiles on their faces.

Test 2, tracking phase—dog is sent to track a live, flightless pheasant. Tested on use of nose, tracking, desire to work, cooperation

Unfortunately, you didn’t execute this test element very well.   It was super windy, and the judges even had you restart once.  Most NAVDA dogs have been on about 1,500 birds by the time they reach your age. In our short time together, you’d never seen or smelled a pheasant, and only even tried seriously tracking a goose wing bumper one time.   You were clearly at a disadvantage and would need to rely completely on the literal interpretation of “natural ability”. Well, you were all over the place except where the pheasant actually went. Between the wind and your inexperience, you just didn’t find a scent. Even still, as far as I’m concerned that 200 yard retrieve made up for anything else that could ever happen!  You were a winner in my eyes, and frankly that’s what really mattered. You are my good boy!

Test 3, water phase—dog is expected to enter water and swim. Tested on water entry, desire to work, and cooperation.

Of course, the water portion of the test was a snap. You knew what we were about to do. You were alert, anxious, and ready to jump into the water. The judge gave the signal, the bumper was tossed into the water and you bolted after it like blazed lightening. You dove into the pond and power-stroked across to the floating bumper, grabbed it and spun around back to me. Onlookers cheered and clapped, the judges were nodding and smiling. After your two required times swimming after the bumper, you kept sneaking around and stealing the judges bumpers out of the tub, and bringing them to me for more water fetching.  Everyone enjoyed that as well, you were so cute.  I hated telling you “no more” with the bumpers.  We were done, it was lunchtime, and a couple South Dakota NAVHDA club members helped me remove your wet bandage and put on a new one.  They were amazed to see the extent of the gash, considering how effortlessly you worked the tests.

We were told the judges would call me over when they were ready to tell me how he did. So we waited.

I expected that we failed the Natural Ability test because of the live track, but, to my surprise, you came away with a Prize III 93 points.  The judges all praised you, said you were a hunter with lots of natural ability, a loving, cooperative boy. I immediately pulled out a bottle of Pink Champaign!  Unfortunately, the rest of the whole group had to go back out after lunch to finish the UT test.  They invited us to stick around until the end and celebrate, but that would have been too late, so, we headed out, vowing that next time, we’ll plan to stay and visit longer with our new friends!

I was so proud I could hardly stand it!  Not bad for a 13 month old untrained dog that I’ve only owned since July 18th, and was only able to work with for about 30 days, not to mention around all the home drama and injury trauma and crap….

I was exhausted.

You were ready to go again.

Your wound had reopened, but it was obvious it happened before we started the testing, as the skin was dried up and trying to heal.  The South Dakota guys that helped me change your dressings said I should leave it wrapped for another day, then let you do what dogs do–and start cleaning it yourself–because it was far too late for new stitches, and the location off the wound was like mine, a place easy to reopen.

It was long drive back, full of reliving the fun and proud moments of the day. Of course by the time we got home, you had managed to reach your leg around the cone and chew off most of the new bandage, so I had to wrestle you down by myself to apply a new one again—one handed.  Yes, you were a real handful, but I did it alone! The girls were thrilled to be home, they were jumping and barking, and showing us they can fetch too. But everything pales in comparison to you and your natural ability.

We celebrated as a family with our Pink Champaign that day. One day next week we can go down south for the afternoon, and I’ll walk with you out in a field for a few minutes. Let you channel your Natural Ability on the real deal one more time….and we’ll celebrate in style once again.