Gotta Love It

by Troy Bailey
Zink Calls Pro-Staff
January 23, 2009

To me great hunting dogs have to have two things - talent/natural ability and training to fine tune and control that talent and natural ability.  I've been very fortunate to have been blessed with an extremely gifted labrador retriever, Cass, who has been plagued by a hack as a trainer, me.  Through alot of trials and tribulations, success and error, we ran that road from puppy to finished gun dog.  There have been plenty of bumps along the way and she is far from perfect, but today was a great example of how ability and desire coupled with training can make watching a dog work almost as fun if not more fun than pulling the trigger.

It had been a so so start to the Nebraska waterfowl season for me.  Between work, commitments, and family I'd been busier than the norm and had missed out on a couple rock'n hunts not only locally but with the boys up in Canada.  We'd been out on a handfull of decent early season hunts but I was more than ready for the weathermans report of heavy snow to the north and a good cold north wind.  Of course the first day I had to work, sat in the office wondering what was going on.  The reports were pretty slow, didn't miss much.  Got out the next day and we had a decent hunt, but not what we expected with the weather.  The next day was set up to be the hum dinger, and it was but not for the normal reasons.  It was two retrieves, one short and one long, that reminded me of how lucky we all are for having the dogs we have.

The first started off innocently enough.  A pair of geese start across the water towards us, work a little and come right in on the deck.  We come up and drop them both.  Send Cass and she brings back the first, as she's returning I see that the other goose had plenty of life in him.  I send Cass for the second, just as she gets to it the goose dove with Cass diving right behind him.  Both goose and dog completely out of site with nothing but ripple remaining untill both explode out of the water, goose firmly trapped in Cass' grip.  Thats desire, you can't train that, time and time again I've seen her do similar things that remind me that her love for what we do equals mine if it doesn't surpass it.  This is what she lives for, plain and simple. 

The second took a little longer but was just as cool, if not more so.  What had been an okay but not excellent duck shoot was changed with a single flock, funny how that works.  We had taken a couple mallards, some teal, when here comes a nice group of Redheads who sit in amongst us.  We come up and with some good shooting (or lucky, you decide) we drop our six.  Cass gets to work picking up the first five, while the sixth is swimming for all it's worth across the lake.  One of my partners is watching the bird, marking where it goes ashore and watching it through binoculars so he can guide me to guide Cass to the bird.  I line her, send her, a couple handles and what seemed like a half hour while she swam 125ish yards and came up on the bank.  Due to all the hunt test training we've done she wanted to drive up the hill but with a whistle and a cast she came busting out of the tall grass on the bank and flushed that Redhead out where she again had to take a short dive.

These are the kind of retrieves that at the moment make you so very proud of your dog.  Once you've had a chance to reflect a little, it becomes so satisfying seeing the combination of ability and training come together.   Atta girl.