THE MASTER HUNTER
by Patti Simmons
 
We stood on the edge of the large, untamed pond, looking across it’s watery expanse. The man, with a clipboard, standing next to me, pointed to a channel on the far side and said “ We shot a bird and it dropped up the hill beyond the channel, would your dog be able to find it for us?” I agreed she would, I knew she would! I bent down to the cocker at my side and informed her of the problem. Not in words, we were far beyond that form of communication; her dark eyes stared intently out at the line my hand was giving her.

She entered the water one step at a time. Not the driving charge and splash of the field bred spaniel, but more like the deliberate motion of a mature lady entering the ocean from a hot Coney Island beach. Her body moved effortlessly, tail, back, and head out of the water with barely a ripple to confirm her forward motion towards her destination. She was up wind of where the gentleman had indicated the fall to me, when she disappeared in the reeds. I gave one blast of my whistle, hoping she could still see me, and directed her with a sweeping arm movement towards the channel. She took advantage of my assistance and moved across the water, up the channel, and was swallowed up into the heavy bush and vegetation of the hill. It was now up to her to do what centuries of heredity and years of training had given her the confidence to do.

The five dogs that had gone before her on this warm afternoon had returned empty handed, so to speak, but she and I had a covenant which I knew she would not break. My covenant to her was to be honest in my expectations of her. When I told her of the down bird, she trusted me that it was there. Her’s to me was to do her absolute utmost to do as I requested. She had proved her tenaciousness to me numerous times in the past and I would not consciously betray her trust in me.

It had taken 6 years to get to where we are today. I had had English Cockers Spaniels for 25 years, the show variety, doing the conformation and obedience competitions, raising the occasional litter. With her litter I decided to try my pick puppy in the field, doing what they had originally been bred to do, hunt birds. We naively started training and I discovered an amazing, hidden, talent in her, and an almost spiritual awakening in me. The numerous training sessions, with those in the know, who guided a hapless handler and a talented little dog, combined with days, weeks, years of honing our skills, finally paid off when we both realized that each alone was nothing but as a team we were everything. Along the way, we found the thrill of early morning adventures over dew-covered meadows, chasing to flight the fleeing pheasants through thick hedgerows between snow covered fields, the essence of the lingering smell of gunpowder carried in the autumn breeze. And added to this is the camaraderie and friendships, borne from the mutual respect we all have, of a good canine hunting companion.

I caught the judge glancing at his watch. Would today be the final leg of our journey to obtain that coveted title or would we have to delay that milestone for another day? I could feel the gallery of friends behind me willing our success. Right now my canine soul mate was no where to be seen. It seemed like hours, was probably more like minutes, when one of the judges thought he saw a movement a ways away from the area of the fall. As I strained my eyes in the direction he indicated, I grimaced at the thought of her hunting those thickets determined to keep her end of the bargain and coming up empty. But at just that moment, a little blue roan bitch stepped from the shadows, at her point of landfall, and glided quietly, effortlessly across the water back in our direction. “There she is...... and she’s got the bird!!!” the judge would say without even trying to hide the amazement and respect in his tone of voice. From behind, I swear I heard a collective sigh of relief.

As she made her way towards me in steely determination, with the large pheasant practically obscuring her view ahead, I fought to keep in check the tears of pride welling up... We had kept our covenant to each other, for today and every day after....