A few years back two great events occurred in my life; I sold my business and purchased my first lab. This was my season-of-life to kick-back and enjoy the fruits of my labors. For years I had secretly dreamed of having oodles of free time to train dogs, hunt under them and embrace a new lifestyle. Now at long-last that day had arrived.
My wife, on the other hand, didn’t necessarily share my enthusiasm. When she found out a lab would be on her doorstep in a few short days, her exact words were “OK, you can have the damn dog, but if you think he’s coming in my house, you’ve got another think coming.”
Didn’t she understand – my version of a mid-life-crisis was far more reasonable than the meltdown I’d seen others go through. I just wanted a dog, that’s all. OK well more than one dog. Next I dropped the bombshell that I was also purchasing a puppy to train from scratch. She was not a happy camper.
It had been more than 30 years since I’d owned a dog so I was worried; could I just flip a switch and jump into the game? Somewhere down deep I just knew this journey was going to be filled with joy, and now looking back, I was 100% right-on. I wonder if I had really understood the time commitment level, would I have been so enthusiastic?
Previous to my new chosen pastime, I’d done a little chukar hunting in the steeps of the Idaho Owyhee Mountains with my brother-in-law beneath his Brittany so I seriously entertained the notion of a pointing dog. Ultimately though I decided upon a started Pointing-lab so that I could hunt under him immediately and reap the benefits of a pointing dog as well. I learned later that labs weren’t specifically designed for the chukar game but the pursuit of this devil-bird has since turned my dogs into chiseled specimens of lab-fitness. I do not however enjoy playing the camel to them during the warm early-season hunts. Sometimes I carry as much as two gallons of water for them. No kidding.
Labs may not cover as much ground as Brittanys but they hunt hard – long beyond the endurance of my 50-year-old body. After our hunts, in the mellow of the evenings, I bind their wounds as they lay basking in the heat next to the fireplace hearth. It’s truly a communing experience as I listen to them groan when I touch them, as if they were the 50-year-old man who just walked his legs off in the Owyhees. I often walk more than 10 miles but I suspect they traverse five times that distance. Labs have so much heart, so much desire to please. My adult kids now laugh at me when after a hunt I say the immortal words, “Life just doesn’t get any better.”
It’s a common occurrence now – my brother-in-law and I continually engage in the “best-breed” debate on almost every hunt but let’s see how well his dog does on a long retrieve that requires handling across the Snake River in the dead of Winter. It aint gonna happen. Plus my dogs actually find the chukars I shoot and even bring them back to me. What’s more if you could see one of my buds lock up on a pheasant or a quail, you’d be impressed. However, I’ll admit it not the same as a pointing breed.
One of my best hunting buddies recently penned the moniker of Lifestyle Nazi to me. According to him I think everyone should think and act as I do and my newfound love for Labs is no exceptions. I suppose everyone loves their dog, and certainly there’s something to be recommended in most breeds, but you’ll have to excuse my bias – Labs are in a class of their own. That said, I’ll concede to the fact that I have very little experience with other breeds.
A fringe benefit of this hobby has been the friendships I’ve made. I found a very talented and helpful group of trainers here in a local Southwest Idaho retriever club and through my association with the club I teamed up with Jake Coon. Jake is young, enthusiastic pro-trainer who previously worked for one of the best in the business – Pat Burns; and now Jake is mentoring me in the hobby. I also purchased the entire Mike Lardy DVD training series and outlined the entire set indexing each segment so I could quickly pull-up the video clip I needed without scanning through the entire DVD. If you’d like a copy of the timeline, drop me an email and send it to you. (livingidaho@gmail.com)
My pup has just passed through the AKC Juniors and my older dog is one leg away from his Senior title. I’ll have to admit, when the judge handed me that first Senior ribbon I felt like a 16 year old girl who had just won the beauty pageant. It was so gratifying. Next year I plan to go straight to Masters with both dogs and check-out the dog-trial game as well.
By the way, since our supposedly “outdoor” dogs entered our world, they haven’t spent even one night in the kennel. My wife fell head-over-heals in love with them. I’m a little embarrassed to confess that they spend most evenings next to me on the couch or sitting on my wife’s lap. Of all people, I wouldn’t have taken her for such a softy. She turned two beautiful hunting machines into 75-pound lap-dogs. But that’s labs for you; they just win your heart.
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