Yellow dog as positive role model

I want to be my dog.

Look at her over there, sitting on that muskrat house. She does not question why we have come here, studying the sky for ducks. She does not whimper, though she has swum through 33-degree water to reach her humble station.

If she is cold, she does not let on. She must know that if I drop a duck from the smudged heavens, she will be called upon to retrieve it. She must remember the chill of the water. Yet, she will go without urging, plunging into the frigid marsh, snuffling through the cattail jungle until she finds the sodden duck and returns with it.

I know this because she has done it several times on this trip to western Minnesota this fall. She will emerge dripping from the water, drop the duck in my hand, give herself a good shake and take up her position atop the muskrat dwelling.

She will watch me for the signal that this sequence needs to be repeated. She will watch the skies for more ducks. She will not leave the muskrat house to nose around on the flooded island where we hunt. I am in awe of her devotion.

I want to be that committed.

The rooster pheasant flushes from a thatch of dried weeds, clattering into flight. Somewhere in the tangle of vegetation before me, the yellow dog is there. It is she who has boosted the pheasant into the air, her persistence that finally has given the bird no other option.

She has been doing this for three days straight now, until her hair has worn thin along the sides of her muzzle. She plows through the cattails, lunges over the reed canary grass, weaves through the switchgrass. She knows where the birds live. She will do what she needs to do to roust them for me.

I don't know how her mind works, but I think she hunts tirelessly for a couple of reasons. One is because she is hard-wired this way by generations of Labs who have come before her. But I think another is that she knows this means something to me, that we are somehow in this together. I am the feeder-shooter. She is the hunter-retriever.

And so, it pains me all the more when I miss this rooster looming large against the morning sky. Some hunters say their dogs give them reproachful looks on occasions such as this, but I have never detected an ounce of such an attitude.

She accepts my shortcomings without judgment and gets back to hunting up a new bird.

I want to learn to let go that easily.

On another occasion, things go much better. The bird twists into the afternoon light from behind a small tree. It curls low across a field of picked corn. The feeder-shooter does his job. The hunter-retriever follows the flight and the fall. She picks up the prize and trots it back to me.

As many times as this has happened, I am always thrilled and thankful. I want to acknowledge our success in some small way. I accept the bird and try to praise my partner. But she will have none of it. She wants to get back to hunting again. She has done her work. There is more to be done.

She teaches me humility.

I want to be my dog.