Doggie Lettie Lou outside and chewing down her morning breakfast, I push back in my lounge chair. Sipping my cup of morning brew I reach down and pick up a recent article I had written and that the Northside Sun had printed, "Hooked." I take delight in some of the old downy recollections that float like feathers and soon I am churning through long ago icy waters in a boat with Willard as I pen a few more memories about the beginning of my duck and quail hunting years.
What a blast for my female psyche-- the first hunt I went on with husband Willard, the first crank of the gun, I had killed me a duck!
I was determined that I needed a retriever to pick up all the game birds that would fall from the sky. Hunt done for the day and only one duck in the boat, we went back so fast wind stung my face, making my eyes smart. There was a smell in the air like an old, rotting fishing pier as we broke through ice floes and churned up the muddy gumbo bottom. I thought my dear, sweet, competitive, duckless husband might be trying to toss me out of the boat and into the river.
Thrilled and braggy I knew this would not be a first and last time expedition.
Stepping from the boat, shivering and wet, nose frozen, water squishing from my galoshes, I paused for a moment. "I want me a good retriever to fetch my mallards," I had said to my husband. "I'm going to make lots of duck gumbo and stew."
Suddenly my thoughts are interrupted, not by a duck dog, but by a barking dog, and I'm no longer climbing into our station wagon.
Pushing up from the recliner I open the back door and let in, not a retriever, but my companion in residence, Lettie Lou.
As I sink back into the lounge chair, she lays her head on my legs and once again the past merges with today as I rub my doggie's soft fur.
***
I went through the local newspapers, rented books on retrievers from the library, bought sports magazines and studied and pondered for weeks, over what would be the best dog breed.
Settled on one, we finally ordered us our dog, "Dutchmoor's Moody duchess" as a Christmas present to the whole family. The black lab puppy was flown in from the University of Maine and arrived in a small crate, her skin poking through the slats like a fat woman wearing too tight panty hose.
When Willard and I got her home and took her out of the box, tail thumping, and rolling her head from side to side, we were covered with floppy, puppy happiness and moist lapping kisses of gratitude. We named her "Dutchy." I bought a book on training, read the directions, and set out to teach our retriever what to do.
A few weeks later, a kind, adventurous lady who worked for us, Cora Jackson, hid behind a large pine tree in our backyard on Eastover Drive, a moldering mass of dark feathers folded into her apron. Clothed in a white dress, she looked like a large ghost as she poised, motionless, waiting for my command to pitch out the strange looking object.
Our house was on the corner of Eastover and Ridgewood, and behind us we could hear noises of cars turning down Rhymes Place, and to the side a constant whine as they passed each other on Ridgewood Road.
I stood in my hose, high heels slowly sinking into the ground, a hard cover book on dog training in one hand, cap gun in the other. I was pointing a play pistol in the face of our bewildered, box-nosed puppy, whose coat was as shiny as polished black boots. I would pull on the trigger, making it go, "Bang, bang," and would say in a voice that had all the authority of a purring kitten, "Stay!" Cora would then throw out what had once been a duck, but now looked like a mound of melting chocolate fudge ice cream, into the yard.
We had been through this so many days, times, and weeks.
Don't ever pray for patience! God doesn't grant patience. He teaches patience by giving you a dog to train! I will say though, that the puppy finally learned what she was supposed to do. She was to sit until I gave her the command to "Fetch," but she was frisky, anxious to retrieve, and eager to please.
Rolling her eyes upward, she would inch forward, grinding acorns and sticks into her velour hide as she slid across the short, prickly grass. She tried to fool me as she scooted in the direction of the putrid duck, her face as innocent as if she were teaching a Sunday School lesson.
"Ahh, ahh," I would say. "No, Dutchy!"
Caught, she would curl her tail between her legs in shame. When she did right and would "Sit, stay," then came her favorite word, "Fetch!" and she bounded forward!
Cora and I applauded and cheered wildly, like we were at a hit musical, while she sat, trembling with pride, and chewed sneakily on the shapeless, smelly mess.
Oh, those days and times! Can you imagine where Cora and I might be now? The two of us on the corner of Eastover and Ridgewood. Her hiding behind a tree throwing out a smelly, rotten bundle, and me shooting a fake cap pistol.
I love dogs, but it didn't take long before this one won my heart. Strong, agile, very social, enthusiastic, from dawn to dusk a bundle of tail-wagging, high energy, as happy on the couch as she was on a hunt, she became a dependable, loving partner.
And, she did love to, "Fetch!"
