By Jim Darnell
Since Christmas I have been reading the hilarious recent New York Bestseller, Marley and Me by John Grogan. It’s a heart warming story of a young family in the making and their adventure with their 97-pound loyal, loving, neurotic, disobedient Labrador retriever named Marley. The book is an absolute hoot. Expelled from obedience school, deathly afraid of thunderstorms, chewing couches, swallowing fine jewelry and drooling on guests are just a few of Marley’s exploits. Those of us who own Labs can identify with the Grogan family and their joys and trials with the yellow tornado that lived in their house.
I can’t fully identify with them since my Labs are hunting dogs. My wife Beth and I believe that dogs belong outside — not in the house. That eliminates many Lab disasters but not all.
After owning many English pointers we got our first Lab in 1985 while living on Perdido Bay in Pensacola, Florida. Pointers are great bird dogs but not real good pets. They’re high-strung and all business. But Labrador retrievers are loyal, loving dogs. Lodie was no exception. She made a great family pet.
Lodie wasn’t AKC registered. I got her from the local dog pound. Shaggy long hair on her tail hinted that she was probably a Lab and a water spaniel. She loved living on the bay.
My primary memory of Lodie was on a foggy day duck hunting on Perdido Bay. The boys and I shot a redhead drake and Lodie leaped from the anchored boat to make the retrieve. But the duck was only wounded and a strong outgoing tide was flowing. The duck took full advantage of the strong tide as Lodie pursued him. Eventually, Lodie and the duck looked like tiny dots far down the bay toward the Gulf. They finally totally disappeared. Had Lodie drowned in the strong tide? Would we ever see her again?
We continued hunting not knowing if Lodie had made the shore or had been swept to sea. About 30 minutes later Lodie appeared. She had grabbed the duck, swam to shore hundreds of yards from the bridge near where we were hunting, walked through woods, bay front neighborhoods and down the highway to find us. What a retrieve!
My next Lab was a black retriever named Gunner. He was about four years old when a friend gave him to me. Gunner was AKC registered and from a line of field trial dog champions. Gunner was obedient and well-trained — almost a robot. But he lacked the one ingredient necessary to make a great hunting dog — desire. He would do the job but was never enthusiastic about it.
Then came Lance. My youngest son Tim named the little black puppy Sir Lancelot the Black Knight on his AKC registration papers. Lance was actually Tim’s dog. Tim trained him. He was not a polished field trial dog but he was aggressive and few crippled ducks ever escaped him. When Tim married in 1995 he and his bride were not allowed to have a dog in their San Antonio apartment. Tim could not think of selling Lance so he prevailed upon me to adopt him. I sold Gunner and Lance became my hunting buddy. Within a year he would not hunt with or for anyone else. He was a one-man dog.
I remember the first time a wounded duck submarined as Lance’s mouth reached for the cripple. Lance just began to swim in tight circles until the duck popped up. A few aggressive strokes and he was hot on the duck’s tail. Another dive. Lance circled some more. Each time the scenario was the repeated the duck became weaker. One last attempt at a dive and Lance’s big jaws clamped around the bird. From that day on the diving trick never helped a duck escape. Lance had their number.
One of Lance’s several bad habits was his hard mouth. He liked to chew on the birds with several hard bites. Sometimes they were well tenderized. He also loved to chew on the duck blind — especially aged cedar posts. He reduced them to saw dust.
Near the end of his hunting career he made a long swim after a cripple that swam across the lake before crawling into the grass on the bank. Lance, now 11 years old, slowly reached the bank and picked up the cripple. Then he saw a duck that we had shot earlier that had drifted to the same bank. He dropped the first bird and picked up the new discovery. “Which one do I take back?” he seemed to be asking. “But if I take this one I have to return for the other,” he thought.
He solved the problem. He ate one and then brought the second bird. What can you say to such an old warrior?
Lance loved duck season. After only a few hunts at the season’s beginning he would start barking the moment my lights turned on at 4:30 a.m. Before the end of the season he would bark at 4:30 a.m. whether the light came on or not. After a few days in late January without a hunt he knew it was over. The barking always stopped.
Lance passed the torch to my present hunting Lab, Lady. Lady is our first yellow Lab and the most affectionate of all our Labs. She loves me almost as much as she does our four goats. They are her pets. She eats goat food with them. She plays with them. She sleeps with them. When I take her for a walk the goats bellow and cry.
Though not as aggressive as some of my hunting buddy dogs, Lady is becoming my best retriever ever. At almost five years old she is in her prime.
One skill Lance never learned was how to retrieve two dead birds at the same time. If he swam after a bird and another bird fell, he would drop the first bird and bring the second one to the blind. Somehow it never clicked with him that his mouth was plenty big to carry two birds. The other day Lady was swimming toward the blind with a pintail drake in her mouth. Between her and the blind was another big drake. When she reached the second bird I could almost hear the wheels in her brain turning. “What do I do?”
She simply opened her mouth, grabbed the second pintail’s neck along with the first and swam to me with both birds.
Lance would have been proud of her.
