ditchparrot19
Member
Everybody at the veterinarian's office -- the receptionist, the vet tech and the doctor herself ? did their absolute best to make eye contact with me during my visit two Sundays ago. I made that impossible for them, however, as I never removed my dark, mirror-lensed sunglasses.
I couldn't let them see my eyes, which were red, swollen and wet. I was there for the worst of reasons ? I was about to lose a cherished canine hunting companion, and those kind people were going to use a catheter and needle to end the relationship. I felt as if my wrap-around Maui Jims were the only thing preventing my complete loss of composure, so they weren't coming off.
I'm starting to hate the month of June in odd-numbered years. In 2015, I lost Zeke, my yellow Lab and the toughest, most loyal animal I've ever known. This time it was Mazie, my big-running, stylish English setter that lived to pursue game birds and cared about little else.
I could easily write a hundred feature-length stories involving Mazie, and not all of them would be the happy kind. Descended from royalty (Tekoa Mountain Sunrise, considered the greatest setter in the breed's long history, appears in her four-generation pedigree three times), she sometimes ignored the fact that we were a hunting team and did whatever she pleased. Those instances became less frequent as she aged, but she was capable of having one right up until the day I retired her from field work at age 11 two years ago.
In all honesty, she was way too much dog for her fat, crippled owner. If there wasn't a bird right where she was presently, there had to be one just a little farther toward the horizon and she'd keep pushing forward until she smelled it. She'd check in on me occasionally to make sure I was still upright, but she did a lot of her hunting out of my view. I didn't want to rein her in too much through training and take the chance on killing some of that coveted prey drive, so I just made sure we hunted in places where her range wasn't a major issue. When she went on point, I'd get a beep on the handheld unit that was linked to her GPS collar and then go find her.
When I'd reach the top of a knoll or come around the end of a tree line and see her standing on point, it was a glorious sight! That long, feathered white tail would be almost erect at the 12 o'clock position, with just the last couple inches tilted slightly toward her head, and every muscle in her body would quiver as she stood stock still. As I approached, I could see her mouth open and close slowly as she took in the scent that she loved so much.
She pointed a boatload of birds during her 10 seasons afield. In addition to all of the hunting, I entered her in every walking field trial I could find within a 3-hour driving radius. She won a bunch of ribbons and one beautiful stone plaque, and other memorabilia from horseback trials in which she was handled by a local professional trainer. The trainer also ran her on many guided hunts for pen-raised birds during which she pointed as many as 40 in a day.
For several years running, Mazie was the star of that trainer's pointing dog demonstrations at the International Sportsman's Exposition in Sacramento. She'd always appear last, following a couple of dogs in earlier stages of development. She'd elicit oohs and ahs from the crowd as she smelled the hidden pigeon and struck her splendid pose, and invariably the first question from the audience would be, "How long does it take to get a dog to do that?" I had a very difficult time refraining from standing up and yelling, "That's my dog!"
Mazie made seven trips to the plains of northeastern Montana, where she was really in her element pursuing that region's Hungarian partridge and sharp-tailed grouse. Unfortunately, three of those excursions were interrupted by encounters with porcupines ? she hated those spiny rodents something fierce and not only tried to bite them, but also pin them to the ground in the manner that a wolf takes down a deer. Twice I had to leave her overnight at the vet's office as they had to put her under full anesthetic to remove all the quills, which started at her mouth and ran the full length of her underside. The old vet told me after the first encounter that a high-powered dog like her probably wouldn't learn from the experience, or at least wouldn't be dissuaded by it. He was right.
This fall, I'll scatter Mazie's cremains at a location I'll keep to myself because there's probably some government regulation that makes that act illegal. It'll be at the site of one of her finest pieces of bird work, when she pinned a wily old rooster pheasant that was bent on running ahead of her by sprinting all the way to the end of a long row of high grass and then coming back toward me to meet the bird head-on.
I wonder what that bird was thinking when he realized that the dog he was intent on eluding was now standing right in front of him, cutting off his only escape route. He wasn't thinking anything a few moments later, as he was floating dead on the surface of a pond and Mazie was in the process of making a water retrieve -- kind of a big deal for her because she didn't care much for swimming and wasn't very good at it.
I'll never have another dog like her, and frankly, I don't want one. I can't handle those phenomenal levels of prey drive and energy at this point in my life. I've got two closer-working dogs left in my stable, a young black Lab and an aging adopted pointer, and their styles are much more suited to my own.
"Great memories of her," my trainer buddy texted me after I'd sent him a message to notify him of Mazie's passing. "One of the best setters I've ever been around."
Yep, the memories -- those are what will live on. The photos, trophies and ribbons are neat, but the pictures I can conjure up in my mind's eye are infinitely more meaningful. And if I ever begin to lose any of them, Lord, let it be the ones involving those darn porcupines.
I couldn't let them see my eyes, which were red, swollen and wet. I was there for the worst of reasons ? I was about to lose a cherished canine hunting companion, and those kind people were going to use a catheter and needle to end the relationship. I felt as if my wrap-around Maui Jims were the only thing preventing my complete loss of composure, so they weren't coming off.
I'm starting to hate the month of June in odd-numbered years. In 2015, I lost Zeke, my yellow Lab and the toughest, most loyal animal I've ever known. This time it was Mazie, my big-running, stylish English setter that lived to pursue game birds and cared about little else.
I could easily write a hundred feature-length stories involving Mazie, and not all of them would be the happy kind. Descended from royalty (Tekoa Mountain Sunrise, considered the greatest setter in the breed's long history, appears in her four-generation pedigree three times), she sometimes ignored the fact that we were a hunting team and did whatever she pleased. Those instances became less frequent as she aged, but she was capable of having one right up until the day I retired her from field work at age 11 two years ago.
In all honesty, she was way too much dog for her fat, crippled owner. If there wasn't a bird right where she was presently, there had to be one just a little farther toward the horizon and she'd keep pushing forward until she smelled it. She'd check in on me occasionally to make sure I was still upright, but she did a lot of her hunting out of my view. I didn't want to rein her in too much through training and take the chance on killing some of that coveted prey drive, so I just made sure we hunted in places where her range wasn't a major issue. When she went on point, I'd get a beep on the handheld unit that was linked to her GPS collar and then go find her.
When I'd reach the top of a knoll or come around the end of a tree line and see her standing on point, it was a glorious sight! That long, feathered white tail would be almost erect at the 12 o'clock position, with just the last couple inches tilted slightly toward her head, and every muscle in her body would quiver as she stood stock still. As I approached, I could see her mouth open and close slowly as she took in the scent that she loved so much.
She pointed a boatload of birds during her 10 seasons afield. In addition to all of the hunting, I entered her in every walking field trial I could find within a 3-hour driving radius. She won a bunch of ribbons and one beautiful stone plaque, and other memorabilia from horseback trials in which she was handled by a local professional trainer. The trainer also ran her on many guided hunts for pen-raised birds during which she pointed as many as 40 in a day.
For several years running, Mazie was the star of that trainer's pointing dog demonstrations at the International Sportsman's Exposition in Sacramento. She'd always appear last, following a couple of dogs in earlier stages of development. She'd elicit oohs and ahs from the crowd as she smelled the hidden pigeon and struck her splendid pose, and invariably the first question from the audience would be, "How long does it take to get a dog to do that?" I had a very difficult time refraining from standing up and yelling, "That's my dog!"
Mazie made seven trips to the plains of northeastern Montana, where she was really in her element pursuing that region's Hungarian partridge and sharp-tailed grouse. Unfortunately, three of those excursions were interrupted by encounters with porcupines ? she hated those spiny rodents something fierce and not only tried to bite them, but also pin them to the ground in the manner that a wolf takes down a deer. Twice I had to leave her overnight at the vet's office as they had to put her under full anesthetic to remove all the quills, which started at her mouth and ran the full length of her underside. The old vet told me after the first encounter that a high-powered dog like her probably wouldn't learn from the experience, or at least wouldn't be dissuaded by it. He was right.
This fall, I'll scatter Mazie's cremains at a location I'll keep to myself because there's probably some government regulation that makes that act illegal. It'll be at the site of one of her finest pieces of bird work, when she pinned a wily old rooster pheasant that was bent on running ahead of her by sprinting all the way to the end of a long row of high grass and then coming back toward me to meet the bird head-on.
I wonder what that bird was thinking when he realized that the dog he was intent on eluding was now standing right in front of him, cutting off his only escape route. He wasn't thinking anything a few moments later, as he was floating dead on the surface of a pond and Mazie was in the process of making a water retrieve -- kind of a big deal for her because she didn't care much for swimming and wasn't very good at it.
I'll never have another dog like her, and frankly, I don't want one. I can't handle those phenomenal levels of prey drive and energy at this point in my life. I've got two closer-working dogs left in my stable, a young black Lab and an aging adopted pointer, and their styles are much more suited to my own.
"Great memories of her," my trainer buddy texted me after I'd sent him a message to notify him of Mazie's passing. "One of the best setters I've ever been around."
Yep, the memories -- those are what will live on. The photos, trophies and ribbons are neat, but the pictures I can conjure up in my mind's eye are infinitely more meaningful. And if I ever begin to lose any of them, Lord, let it be the ones involving those darn porcupines.
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