The dogs approve

It’s a clear case of the inmates running the asylum.

I simply need to accept that.

My dogs tell me I’m too controlling.

Sit.

Stay.

Come.

Fetch.

I’m always directing them.

Or trying to.

Not that they pay a lot of attention.

They do their thing. I do mine.

My friends smile and shake their heads. They all use electronic collars on their dogs. Almost every bird hunter I see in the field follows suit, their Labs, pointers and spaniels performing beautifully on high-tech cue,

I’m still old school, relying on a whistle instead. Of course my tweets are accompanied by a lot of hollering, cussing and cajoling, but in the end it usually works. I do what the dogs want.

This fall we’ve been working on retrieving.

I’m getting much better at it.

Ace, my top dog at the moment, doesn’t retrieve. He does find the few birds I manage to hit, but never picks them up. He waits for me to get there.

He’s uncomfortable with the whole retrieving thing and I respect that.

Baby Ruth, on the other hand, has no such reservations. She, like very springer I’ve owned until Ace, likes to retrieve.

But I had to show her how.

I was jump-shooting ducks on a prairie stream the first day of waterfowl season with Ace and Ruth. I knocked down a teal, which landed in the water. I yelled “fetch!” and Ruth leapt in, but before she reached the duck, it regained consciousness and began to swim away.

She responded by swimming with the duck, all the while I was shouting instructions from the bank. Ruth eventually tired of this game and climbed out of the creek. The little duck, by then, had disappeared.

I walked the back and forth along the bank, searching for the teal before I noticed Ruth staring into the tall grass at the water’s edge. Kneeling down and slowly parting the grass, I could see the duck hiding tight against the bank.

Lying in the mud and the wet grass, I belly-crawled to where the teal was hiding, grabbed it around the neck like it was a snake, and pulled it out of the water.

I regained my feet and noticed both dogs were watching me with what looked like approval. I was pretty happy myself. It was one of my better retrieves.

And I wasn’t even wearing an electronic collar.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]