I once acquired a black Labrador puppy that I named Molly. As Molly and I grew accustomed to each other, we started to gel as a team. Molly was such a joy to work with. When she was around my daughter, she was gentle and playful and eager to please. She loved to play fetch. I didn’t even have to teach her how to play fetch, she instinctively knew how to play. I believe it was because of her innate hunting skill. Molly would fetch the same for me as she would for my daughter. She didn’t discriminate. When she brought the stick or the ball or whatever we threw for her to fetch, she would just run and get it and bring it back and lay it at our feet. Occasionally, as she got older, she would play with me and hang on to whatever she fetched when she brought it back. It was then up to me to wrestle it away from her. Sometimes, she just wanted to prove that she was smarter and stronger than me. Not to mention faster than me. She always won too. She usually never tried that with my daughter, however. I think she understood the difference between our relationships. That was something that my previous dog, Tobie, had never learned to distinguish (being the difference of the relationship between me and Tobie versus the relationship between my daughter and Tobie). Molly intrinsically understood the difference between those relationships. I liked that. Molly was also a great swimmer. The first time I took her to a lake to give her experience around water, she just jumped right in and started swimming. I didn’t have to take her out in the boat like people told me I might have to do. I didn’t have to throw her in and hope that she would either sink or swim. And then pray that it would be swim rather than sink. That didn’t seem like a smart idea at all to start with. And you would not believe the preparation I took when I gave her what was to be her first of many rides in my Chevy van. I did not know if she would get carsick or not. As it turned out, she loved to ride in cars. Whenever I said, “Come on Molly. Let’s go for a ride.” She would eagerly jump into the van and wait for me. Another crucial hunting test that I gave Molly was the gun test. What is the gun test, you ask? That is an excellent question. Thank you for asking. The gun test is where you take your dog out into the field with your weapon of choice and fire a few test rounds to see if they get spooked every time the gun fires and they hear the report. For example, my weapon of choice for bird hunting is a 12-gauge shotgun shooting three-inch Magnum cartridges. When I took Molly out into the field for the gun test, we just walked along, and I fired my shotgun without warning. Molly just stopped and waited. That was behavior you might expect from a trained bird-dog, to stop and wait to see if a bird fell. I thought, “That’s really strange. Molly is demonstrating advanced hunting skills to me that I haven’t taught her. Amazing!” We walked some more, and I fired again. Again, Molly stopped and waited. Impressive. Simply impressive. My final hunting test for Molly would be to take her around actual birds. But where could I do that? As luck would have it, my dilemma solved itself. My unit organized a company picnic, which was held at American Lake on North Fort Lewis. My friend and I took Molly out on a rowboat to see how she would react in a boat in the water. No problem there. As we were rowing the boat along, we ran into a flock of ducks. As we came up to the ducks, Molly jumped into the water and began swimming after them. Well, that answered one of my questions. She knew she was supposed to chase birds. The problem was that she was chasing live birds. Okay. Minor little problem. The birds need to be dead first. Cuz last time I checked; they can swim a hell of a lot better than dogs can. Not to mention, birds can fly. The ducks easily started to out-swim Molly. Essentially, those ducks took Molly on a wild ‘duck’ chase, making her goosed. Okay. I could see now where she needed work. I had to teach her the difference between dead birds and live birds. I had to teach her that she should only chase dead birds. I called her back, and she returned to the boat. She damn near capsized that little rowboat getting back in. But I could tell that she thoroughly enjoyed her little experience. I had myself one hell of a hunting dog, and my daughter had a good friendly playmate as well. I could tell this dog would not be just another pet companion of futility for me and my family.
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