The Trouble With Dogs
By Dick Ellis
Two weeks before Christmas, a note came in from my friend and often hunting and fishing partner, Steve Henske of Stevens Point. “Do you want to know the trouble with dogs?” Steve wrote. “You get them as a puppy, they spend countless days with you as loyal companions, and then they break your heart.”
“Last night, our chocolate lab, Jesse, died. She was 10-years old and going down hill since contracting blastomycosis in North Dakota two years ago. Give your dog a rawhide and a hug. Life is much too short for dogs.”
Too short indeed. But the promise of endless tomorrows never was the prerequisite for the bond between man and his best friend to grow tight. On the contrary, the certainty of a never-really-ready goodbye is the sole ingredient, the soul ingredient, that makes whatever years we are given so precious.
So precious, in fact, that for some of us memories of our dogs can serve as a reflection and a very real kind of calendar on our own lives. Instead of the eighties, the nineties, 2000s, a hunter’s life in part becomes the Gunner-years, the Jesse-years, the Cody-years. A man goes gray and his family grows older beside the dogs filling the album pages. And life happens.
Gunner was the last of a litter in Stevens Point when a dirt-poor Henske, a student at UW-Stevens Point stopped at the Kennel just to look again at the little Golden Retriever. The bills rolled in his pocket weren’t a third of what the other puppies had demanded. “Would you hunt this dog if you had him?” the Kennel owner asked. “Would you keep him in the house with you?”
Two affirmative answers later and a nineteen year old student walked home with a never-to-be-forgotten gift of pure generosity. And a dog that would boggle the mind with his work in the pheasant fields and duck marshes of Wisconsin, season after season.. Finally, of course, breaking Henske’s heart totally and completely when it was time to go away at age 16.
Jesse was next, welcomed into Steve and Missy’s growing family of three grade school children. Jesse also, would earn most valuable player status in the duck and geese arenas. My own most vivid memories of the chocolate lab include an October dawn on marsh skis in the heart of the Meade Wildlife Area and explosions of teal rising in front of an eastern skyline tinted orange, very near where Henske had buried Gunner years before. And Jesse giving us the peace of mind that the mallards that dropped with our loads of 12-gauge shot would never be lost.
Henske sat up with Jess until 4:00 a.m. on that unwelcome December night two weeks ago. Wrapped in blankets by her owner, she died sometime between then and dawn. And Steve said his last goodbye, buried his friend on his own property and wrote his notes to those of use who would want to know.
Cody has been the most recent adoptee of the Henske home, a field bred golden retriever born to hunt and brought home on Steve’s lap June 9th as 49-day old, five pounder from Green Meadows Retrievers of St. Croix Falls. Cody joins two Henske graduates of high school and one sophomore. Her owner, officially, is a middle-ager. And life keeps happening. (Photo: Steve Henske and his new Golden Retriever, Cody, are lost in a sea of Rock County pheasant habitat a few days after Christmas. Henske’s 10-year old Chocolate Lab, Jesse, died two weeks before Christmas of Blastomycosis, and the life cycle of hunter and dog begins again.)
When the Henske family made their annual Christmas trip south for the Holidays and stayed in our New Berlin home, it didn’t take long for Steve and me to land in the field. Henske wanted more bird work for his pup, and I too am very much in tune with the pages turning on Soldier Blue’s calendar. Ten years, and a 100 wild roosters have passed since I brought my starving, blue-eyed, stinky puppy home from a Milwaukee alley on a December morning just before Christmas.
We pounded on doors and asked permission to hunt near Janesville in Rock County. We heard a “no” or two before landing in good cover that serves as the foundation for Wisconsin’s wild bird program. It was a sun-splashed December 27 and the sand was running out on the pheasant season too.
We were surprised by a huge covey of 25 or so quail that exploded in front of us to disappear in seconds to places unknown. We were as surprised when two coyotes stood from their sun-soaked beds on the slope of a hill to skidattle toward the horizon.
Henske and I separated, and Blue led me on one of his patented runs on the scent of a wild bird that I have become so accustomed to over our decade-long partnership. There was a savvy pheasant here, somewhere, a bird that would stay with the cover over a last resort of flight. Blue pushed the chase over three minutes, and 100 yards, finally wheeling to freeze in his bizarre mongrel point. A long-tailed rooster fell seconds later.
Henske was pleased when Cody’s sense of smell obviously flushed the wild bird that fell to his shotgun. “I think she’s coming along at an average pace,” he said. “They say not to expect anything out of a puppy until she’s a year old. Anything you get out of her is just a bonus. But she’s definitely making the connection between scent and the birds. I’m just trying to expose her to as many hunting experiences as possible. Right now, though, a puppy is just supposed to be having fun. Like the old guys walking behind em.”
Four roosters would fall after a day’s work by a young pup with life ahead of her and an old veteran a year closer to sunset. Cody would need a nap at day’s end. Blue would need an aspirin. I know, Buddy, I thought. I didn’t have a gray hair when I met you outside of that alley, and I certainly didn’t have as many aches. Come to think of it, Lori and I didn’t have a daughter either. Can Taylor Rae really be in third grade?
That’s life, I guess. And it sure is good.
This Dick Ellis story originally appeared in December 2002.