I was an easy sell.
When my wife and youngest son, the latter being the hunter of the two who often wondered aloud when we were getting another bird dog, found a golden retriever puppy for sale in our price range, I was all in on pulling the trigger.
After putting our old and certainly beloved golden, Ollie, down in winter, I’d been trying to wrap my head around the trials of raising a puppy. I justified the undertaking, at least the potty-training part, by reasoning that I get up a couple times in the middle of the night anyway, so letting a puppy out would add little to my journey other than having to put on some shoes.
Turns out, after not having done the puppy thing for roughly 15 years, it’s been interesting how much I’d forgotten. And I certainly don’t remember being this tired back then.
No matter. We’re all in and the casualty list of chewed shoes, table legs, outdoor furniture cushions and the beheading of the occasional garden flower is shortish and hardly worth getting bent out of shape.
As I write this, Larry is 4 months old and change. If his dad and grandpa are good measuring sticks, Larry will be about 80 pounds fully grown. His big puppy paws lend some credence to that.
I’ve had a handful of bird dogs over the years and all of them I would describe as good. Certainly, my “good” differs from others, but I was certainly happy because they came when they were called, found the occasional bird and were cool to have around camp or home. Didn’t matter.
While Larry is a blank slate at this turn, months away from hunting season, I can say that his interest in the birds visiting our back yard at sunrise each morning while I drink coffee and scratch his ears is keen.
Then again, so is his interest in smashing and eating the ants and other bugs that make the fatal mistake of catching his attention on the concrete patio. If this somehow translates to flushing and retrieving upland game down the road, maybe we’ve got something.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Larry will be just 8 months, still a pup, when the grouse season opens in early September. Like my Mom and Dad when they dropped me off for my first day of public school years ago, my expectations of Larry are not high.
Nor should they be.
I expect his early season grouse hunts to be a confusion of clickity, clackity grasshoppers, the occasional rabbit that he doesn’t stand a chance in catching and a myriad of new sounds and smells.
Just as long as he experiences all this embarrassment of newness in the same township I’m hunting in, we’ll be OK.
