Cookie's Day

Dove season opened today. For me, here in North Dakota, the first day of dove season is the opening of the hunting season. Next week the season on grouse will open and it seems that every week or two thereafter another season will open, in some cases the new season replacing one that is closing. The sequence of seasons opening and closing is something that I truly enjoy. However, in this household I am not alone because Cookie, my German Wirehair, suddenly finds a new purpose in life--the hunt.

For the past several days Cookie has been like a tight clock spring. Every few minutes she would walk around my desk and push her muzzle under my arm and then try to flip my hands off the keyboard. If that didn’t work to get my attention she would start looking around on my desk for something to “retrieve,” usually one of my fountain pens. She doesn’t pick up ballpoint pens and rarely grabs a pencil but when she finally settles on something to retrieve she grabs it, sometimes working herself into a semi-standing position to get what she wants. Her game then is to go around the desk, with the pen in her mouth, and then “bring” me the pen. I don’t know if it is the change in temperature, or like the deciduous trees when the hours of sunlight changes it triggers their change of color, the sunlight somehow tripping Cookie’s awareness that it is nearly hunting season, but something does trigger the change.

As August counts down to September she becomes increasingly fidgety, wanting to get outside, get in the Suburban and do something. She wants to be active. Usually the opening of dove season finds me up early to get in the fields. Today everything had to wait until I had taken care of other business, and I don’t know if Cookie could read my desire to go hunting, or there is a mysterious connection between us, but she knew. This afternoon, when I walked over to the hunting vests hanging on one wall Cooke came unglued. She began jumping around the office and one minute she would be sitting by the door and the next she was right beside me. Suddenly, when I picked up my shotgun she calmed down and went to the door and sat in front of it. Her tail was wagging furiously across the floor and her legs were quivering and she was staring at the door as if she could open it by sheer doggie willpower.

Normally, when I open the office door and Cookie “escapes” into town she runs a few laps around our block, giving my heart another reason not to work as intended because she has no appreciation of cars on the street, but this time she went to the Suburban and waited. I let her in, clipping her leash so she couldn’t get in the front seat, and then I loaded Buster (“her” Basset hound, that’s another story).

After putting my shooting bag and shotgun in the front seat we were off. Cookie was calm, or at least as calm as she can be, while I drove to a prairie road between roost trees and a harvested field. Somewhere between leaving my office and reaching my hunting spot, a place where I could make a blind for pass shooting at dove, I decided that it was Cookie’s day. I arranged my shotgun, possibles bag and all important Thermos of coffee while Cookie and Buster were clipped to the Suburban. Then I was ready. I turned them loose and stood back to watch. Buster started on a heading and his stumpy, fat, legs blurred as he ran across the stubble field. Cookie immediately started hunting. She had her nose down and began coursing, but just as I had earlier decided that it would be her day, she decided to have more fun. She found water, chased the blackbirds out of the cattails, and when I shot at a passing dove she turned to see if it would fall (it didn’t).

Today was Cookie’s day. She ran, she swam, and she hunted, and generally enjoyed life. That is what it is all about, enjoying our world. I fired one barrel of my muzzle loader double and I missed. Okay, who cares? I don’t. Maybe I am becoming older, or less critical of myself, but whatever it is I had more fun watching my dog bound across the stubble field, charge into the cattails and then splash and swim. She shook off the summer and prepared herself for what is truly her season--the autumn, when colors of celebration burst throughout the tree lines, farmsteads and along the rivers, and deep inside those color filled days is the time of the hunt--Cookie’s time--our time. I suppose that is what separates us from those who don’t hunt. All they can do is look at Cookie’s time; those of us who hunt are part of her time. It really is a big difference in how we are living life.

Think about it. glg

Just Thinking About Dogs

There are three pictures on a book shelf across from my desk. Two are black & white and one is color and the color one is of my mother kneeling beside my Springer Spaniel, Gretel. I’d just had Gretel to the groomer and I stopped at my mother’s home for our daily visit and coffee, and to let her see Gretel all groomed and cleaned up. It was the last time my mother saw Gretel alive because two days later a drunk driver hit and killed my dog. The shock of having my dog die in my arms is something I have never recovered from. Don’t misunderstand me, I’ve seen my share of death and some of it has been in pretty large doses, but having that wonderful, loving, spirited dog die in my arms while my wife was driving madly to the vet’s office has never left me and that’s probably why the two black and white photos are on my shelf. One is of Gretel when she was only a few weeks old, hiding behind a pine tree and playing “catch me.” The other is of me leaning over to pet her. I’ve got a shotgun in my hand and we’re standing in water. The look on Gretel’s face tells it all—she’s having a great time.

That’s not the only picture of Gretel in my office. There is one that was taken on a partridge hunt and another of me kneeling beside her, taken the same day that the one of her and my mother was taken. Those last pictures are treasures and every year when I make it back to Colorado I take some time to visit my friend, Al, and while there I go outside to spend a few minutes at the graves of my pets.

Between Gretel and now Cookie I had a third dog—Jenny. She too was a Springer and like all of my dogs was a wonderful part of my world and when I close my eyes I can relive and laugh about her antics. She made the cover of a couple of magazines and was a constant companion, whether fishing, hunting or just being. Jenny was fantastic at finding birds and doing what she was supposed to do—flush them into flight. After we moved to North Dakota Jenny got sick and when nothing helped I finally had to have her put down, but I didn’t have the heart to bury her here in North Dakota so I had her cremated and her ashes are on another shelf. Sometimes I pick up the urn and hold it and read her ID tag. I haven’t had the heart to scatter or bury her ashes, although Al said I could bury her ashes with the other dogs.

There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t pet and love all of my dogs (I now have three, plus M’s Jack Russell, Rylie and he gets his share of my attention). Each one of them is an important part of my life and that includes my rotten Jack Russell, Rosie. She spends most of every day getting into trouble for one thing or another—although she is sound asleep in my lap as I write this. (Cookie is on my feet and Buster sleeping next to my chair. Rylie is in the house with M, probably curled up next to her in bed.) I try to balance my attention between the dogs because I know there will come a day when all I’ll have of them will be the pictures on the book shelves and the memories of them. It won’t be enough, but it’ll be better than life without having had them in my life.

I’ve always thought that dogs give our world a magical value that pound for pound has a greater worth than all of the precious metals and gemstones humanity has ever mined. Those of us who hunt with our dogs, whether they are so-so hunters or smarter than we are, get the added pleasure of stocking up on memories that give our lives a depth of meaning the non-hunter can never share.

Dogs in our lives sort of make everything else bearable, don’t you think?

Christmas thoughts,the turkey march and great dogs and cats

Christmas 2009 is now in the history books. This year’s Christmas was one where Michelle and I kicked back and did very, very little. It was fine. We exchanged a few simple gifts between us and my in-laws and after that we relaxed and let the snow fall. That part has been kind of interesting because in the space of only a couple of days we’ve had well up to two feet of snow. We also had to deal with the sustained winds over 20 mph (closer to 30 I guess) which makes this storm the Blizzard of Christmas 09. Or, as the Grand Forks Herald calls this storm in the Sunday Morning edition—Blizzard Alvin, named after the coincidental release of the new Alvin and the Chipmunks movie. Okay, I can buy that.

One thing about this storm is that it has put the lid on my hunting season. I think Cookie is equally convinced hunting season is now over. This evening, after a very short stint outside, she decided the best place to be was in front of my woodstove. With more than two feet of snow on the ground pheasant hunting would be a huge challenge for both of us and the birds certainly don’t need the pressure. (The picture is of Cookie soaking up the heat of the wood stove.)

The snowstorm has brought some guests to town—a flock of wild turkeys! This area has never been known for a huntable population of wild turkeys and when Michelle and I first moved here in the fall of 2000 we contacted the state DOW about stocking wild turkeys on her family’s farm, only to be told the birds couldn’t survive. Guess what? They were wrong and Michelle’s intuition about the birds was right. Nowadays it is not at all uncommon for us to see wild turkeys in the region. I think the birds are adapting quite well to North Dakota and just to prove it, when the weather gets tough, the birds come to town. They’ve been feasting on the crabapples in my in-laws’ yard as well in other yards. Yesterday morning Michelle and I were treated to the Wild Turkey March (sort of like the Elephant Walk) as the birds, in single file, walked down the street in front of our house, turned west at the corner and walked down that street and headed for the grain elevators where they could feed on the spilled grain. Unfortunately I keep my camera in my office, which is 50 feet from the house so I didn’t get a picture but I’ll carry it into the house with me for a few days and try to get a photo.

Something this Christmas that got me to thinking was a little gift that Michelle gave her mother. It is a framed card and on it is written a nice expression about favorite dogs in heaven. I’ve always wondered if, when I die, I will have the pleasure of being rejoined with the great dogs of my life. You know, the dogs that were part of our life from the time they were a puppy until they left us, sometimes old, sometimes before they became old--always too soon. I’ve often thought about Toby, my first dog. She was really the family dog and everyone claimed her but she’s still imprinted on my memory as “my” dog. There came a succession of other dogs but none of them made an imprint until after Vietnam, when my first wife and I were living in San Diego. We had a string of dogs, ending with one called Rocky. Of these dogs only Scruffy seemed to have really imprinted himself on that dog part of my being. We gave him to a farmer because he was too big for military housing.

I didn’t have another dog until I acquired Grettel, my Springer spaniel. Her full name was Crestone Grettel, named after the peaks that towered over the kennel where she was born. The first and last photographs of Grettel adorn my office bookshelf and every time I look up I see Grettel as a puppy with pushed up nose and no flecking on her legs and she's looking at me from behind a tree. Right above that picture is one of me holding a shotgun and reaching down to pet her. We’re standing in the swampy waters of a wetland near Florence, Colorado where we had been hunting my favorite shorebird—Wilson Snipe. She is now buried under the evergreen tree at a friend’s house. She died in my arms after being hit by an inattentive, speeding driver. My next dog, also a Springer, was Jenny, her registered name was Lord Nelson’s Jennifer-Diane. She died here in North Dakota and her ashes are on another book shelf. I’ve never had the heart to part with them although I’ve always said I would bury her ashes next to Grettel. Michelle says she’ll mix Jenny’s ashes, and the ashes of any of my other dogs, or cats, with mine and either scatter them together or have them buried together.

I remember when I buried Grettel; a half-dozen friends went with me to Al’s house and stood around while I buried her, my hunting coat lining her grave, with an unfired 12-gauge shell in a coat pocket. When she slept in my makeshift office while I worked she used my hunting coat for a bed. It was only right that she sleep on it for eternity. My friends were there as much for themselves as to provide comfort to me. First thing every morning, when I opened the door, Grettel made the rounds to visit her friends. Whenever we came home from hunting or fishing she made her rounds again, as if to check that everything was okay in the world. I always worried she’d get hit by a car near our home. I lost her the morning of July 7, 1987, when I took her to the park for a morning walk.

I buried two other pets under that same tree. They were both pets that had been part of our family. There was Hans, a mutt dog that had belonged to Gail, my second wife, before we even met and he become a major fixture in our home and after I brought Grettel home he became her best friend. He died in October, 1990. There was also Lucas the Cat. I adopted him before Gail and I were married. Hans didn’t mind Lucas sharing our bed and when I acquired Grettel neither she nor Hans seemed to mind sharing bed space with Lucas, although the bed sometimes got a little crowded with Gail, me, two dogs and the cat.

Lucas was the last of the three to die, in August, 1995.

Hans, I’ve always believed, was poisoned by a mean-spirited old man who lived behind us. I truly detested the old bastard and one day, when he was across the fence between our yards and cussing Gail’s new dog’s barking (Sarah didn’t bark) he said, “I got rid of one dog, I can rid of another.” I decked him. It didn’t matter that he was probably in his late 60’s or early 70’s. Even if he hadn’t poisoned Hans he evidently killed someone’s dog and deserved a fist in the face. A few months later he died of a heart attack and when another neighbor asked me if I wanted to contribute to flowers for the family I declined, then added that he was a pet killer and the world was a better place without him.

Lucas the Cat was the only one of the three that lived a full life. The end of a great relationship came when was just over 17 years old and he suffering from feline diabetes. Lucas was urinating almost pure blood and his weight had dropped so much that he was no more than bones encased in fur. When I took him to the vet to be put to sleep they had trouble finding a vein but a minute or so after they did his eyes, which had been mostly closed for days, opened wide and he looked at me. Not with terror, fear or anything terrible, but the same look of love that he had held in those eyes for the fifteen years he was part of my life. Then he closed his eyes and I watched him sigh and stop breathing. I took him out to my friend’s house and asked for permission to bury Lucas beside his friends. Al told me I could and offered to help. I told him I wanted to do it alone, feeling that I was burying something else as well. When I was finished, I put a rose on the marker Al had made for Grettel, another one on Hans’ grave and one on the fresh dirt that covered Lucas. I know my eyes were so full of tears that the hardest thing for me to do was see anything clearly but I swear that through the misty haze of my eyes I saw Lucas walk up to Grettel, rub her chin and then go between Hans and Grettel where he sat for a second, as if waiting, and then the dogs turned and trotted away, with Lucas running between them. All three now reunited. Once, they looked back at me then disappeared into the mist of my eyes.

That card about our pets waiting for us in heaven. Well, I think it has to be true—don’t you?

Finding a Memory of a Hunting Dog

Sometimes, when we are pawing around old boxes, we find something that triggers a memory. That happened to me the other day. I’ve been buried under a huge book project and I was trying to complete the sample chapters, proposal and a detailed narrative outline—all at the same time. Everything in the book happened thirty years ago and although I’ve kept all the notes and documentation I’ve let everything become disorganized so I was not surprised to find a set of photographs that are almost as old—pictures of a dog. Not just any dog but my first “real” hunting dog. Her name was Gretel, Colorado Crestone Gretel to be exact. She was a registered Springer spaniel. She was my hunting dog and constant companion. At that time I still ran every morning and she ran with me. I didn’t need to put her on a leash because she stayed close although she ran through the irrigation ditch bordering the road.
Gretel had personality. When my wife (then) Gail, and I would go someplace we often took Gretel and her dog, Hans, and they rode in the back of the pickup. We never worried about either one jumping out and when we returned home Gretel would wait for me to lower the tailgate before she exploded from the truck to make her “Hi, neighbor, how’s everything going, I’m home now,” run. After her greeting lap she ran to the backdoor and she would wait for me to open the door.
Gretel started life as a flushing-retriever but on a visit to Gail’s grandmother’s Oklahoma farm Gretel retrieved a very colorful and valuable chicken and the grandmother took after Gretel with a broom. From that day on Gretel never retrieved a bird. She would find a downed bird, put her foot on it then bark “here it is.” That was the extent of her retrieving. She never failed to find birds for me and together I killed a lot of pheasant, quail and shorebirds that she flushed. She loved to hunt Wilson’s snipe and some of the last pictures taken of us hunting were on a snipe hunt.
I’d taken Gretel to the groomer for a midsummer grooming and on the way home we stopped at my mother’s. Dora Geer loved Gretel and Gretel loved her back. Every morning for six years I brought Gretel to my mother’s house and while Dora and I drank coffee and solved world and family problems Gretel parked herself beside my mother’s chair, waiting patiently for Dora to scratch her ears, which she obediently did every few minutes. Before I left that day my mother took the last picture of Gretel and me.
A few days later Gretel pushed me out of my morning sleep by climbing into bed and parking herself near my head and whining. There were dove in the yard and she wanted to either go to the park and chase her training dummy and do her laps around the park or for me to take her on a run. I got out of bed and decided to take her to the park and that morning, rather than walking her to the park, I put her in my pickup and drove to the park.
From the center of the park I didn’t see the squirrel across the road, nor did I know a car was on the road and I certainly could not see the drunk driving it. Gretel bounded after the squirrel. I heard Gretel’s single yelp of pain and ran toward her. A passerby helped me load her in my pickup and I heard him tell the babbling drunk that he was fortunate my dog was still alive and my attention was on her or I’d probably beat the hell out of him. I rushed Gretel home. Gail helped me load my dog in her car and she drove madly toward our vet’s office in Cañon City. I sat in the backseat and held Gretel. Half way to the vet’s office I felt my dog’s life slip away. We went on to the vet’s in the hope that she was only unconscious. He confirmed she was dead.
I took Gretel home but I couldn’t bring myself to bury her right away. I wrapped her in my hunting coat and put her on our bed. Friends and family came over and our neighbors, who for years had seen her run her “I’m home” circle, came over. Finally I called my friend Al and asked if I could bury Gretel under the piñon tree in his yard because she had claimed that tree as hers when I would go to visit him.
Gretel had a funeral. When I loaded her in the car I didn’t notice the number of friends in my home, nor did I realize they were following me to Al’s house in Penrose. When the procession pulled into his circular drive he came outside to meet us. Together we dug Gretel’s grave and when it was finished I arranged my hunting coat in the bottom of the grave and placed some unfired and empty shotgun shells in the grave, plus a couple of pheasant tail feathers and a training dummy with quail wings taped to it. Finally I dropped a few bits of her dry food in the grave then laid my dog in the grave and pulled the sides of the hunting jacket up so I could cover her with it.
I looked around and there were so many friends that I realized not only had I lost my dog but my neighbors and friends had lost a dog that they loved. I told them how much I loved Gretel and why. It wasn’t because she was a great hunting dog because by some standards she wasn’t because she wouldn’t retrieve a bird but because she made every moment a joy. Gretel was mourned because she had shared her life with so many people.
I couldn’t fill in her grave and while I spoke with the friends, Al filled in her grave. Later he made a metal marker with her name and we wired her bell to it. Eventually two more pets were buried in the shade of that piñon. Hans died a few years later and then a couple of years after his death my cat, Lucas, died of old age. Alone, I buried Lucas between Hans and Gretel and after filling in his grave I patted the dirt and said goodbye to the loyal old cat that was the last of the pet trio—Gretel, Hans and Lucas the Cat. As I kneeled there my mind played one of those tricks where what we want to see our mind lets us see—for only an instant. The three of them were sitting together, as they often had sat in life, Gretel and Hans on either side of Lucas. They turned and walked away—together. The image disappeared and I was looking across the broad, gentle valley toward the distant Wet Mountains.
I put the pictures away and walked to my desk. I had to step over Cookie, around Buster then push Rosie out of my chair. Today I share my office with three dogs and my bedroom with Ophelia—my cat. Buster is a Basset hound that I rescued from the pound and Rosie is a Jack Russell Terrorist (Terrier).
Cookie has found that “mind and heart space” that is reserved for hunting dogs—those special dogs that sleep under your chair in the off season and on days when you should be hunting waits by the door, under the coat hanger where your hunting coat is draped or in front of the gun safe.
When a hunting dog is gone, you never really turn loose of it. Hunting dogs are fixed in the memory of cold mornings, long fields, fast flushes, great shots and humbling misses. Photos of Gretel, my first hunting dog, Jenny, my second hunting dog, and now Cookie, adorn my walls and shelves. That’s the way it should be. Don’t you think? glg