(part 1)
I remember once seeing a bumper
sticker on the back of a battered old pickup truck. It said, “My wife, yes; my dog, maybe; my
gun, never.” Its message really raised
my hackles because it hit too close to home!
Carmon loved his dogs only slightly less than he loved his guns. Growing up as he did, alone and left to his
own devices most of the time, he became a quiet man. Dogs were the perfect pets. They were loyal. They were companionable. They were good listeners. They didn’t talk a lot. Little wonder that he loved them.
In the early days of our marriage, we
didn’t have a dog, only because our various landlords forbade it. That was soon rectified when we bought a home
of our own. Although there were many
dogs over the years, three of them stand out in my memory Tanya, Brandi, and
Freckles.
Tanya was a German Shorthaired
Pointer. Carmon rescued her from the
pound just hours before she would have been euthanized. He could tell she was a purebred just by
looking at her and he was excited to bring her home. He had recently taken to duck hunting and
thought he had found in Tanya the perfect birddog. It was only after he had brought her home
that he learned that was not likely to be.
The first time Carmon took Tanya duck hunting, he was full of excitement. The migration had been heavy that year and the ducks on the pond were - for lack of a better phrase - sitting ducks! As dozens of ducks settled onto the water, Carmon raised his shotgun, took careful aim, and fired. The ducks took off in one direction and Tanya took off in the opposite direction, her tail between her legs. Carmon found her, in the back of his pickup, cowering near the cab and shaking all over. Carmon waded out himself for the one duck he'd hit, while Tanya stayed in the truck shamed as only a gun-shy birddog could be.
The training began the next day. Carmon withheld Tanya’s feeding until he got
home from work. He had a small pistol
and this he loaded with blanks. He put
out the food where Tanya could see it and began shooting the blanks into the
air. At the first retort of gunfire,
Tanya ran into her doghouse and would not come out for the rest of the
night. Carmon removed the dish of dogfood to
the kitchen and said he would try the next night. We were all instructed that we were not to
feed Tanya anything during the day. She
had clean water, of course, but no food.
The next night, Carmon repeated the drill; he placed Tanya’s food where
she could see it and began firing the blanks.
As had happened the night before, Tanya retreated to her doghouse and
Carmon removed the food. This went on
for three days.
I had a very hard time with this
training program and so, I suspect, did our children. It broke my heart to see that poor, hungry
dog cowering in her bed with her head down and her tail between her legs. Many times I tried to talk Carmon out of this
plan. I was afraid she would literally
starve to death rather than face the noise of that gun. In fact, this entire routine was on the verge
of heading to divorce court when the night finally came that Tanya’s hunger
overcame her fear. Carmon put out the
food and began shooting the blanks.
Tanya stood there on quivering legs and then slowly approached the
dish. Once she decided to eat, she did
so quickly, rarely even flinching as the sound of gunshots continued to
echo.
After that, Tanya was no longer afraid
of the sound of any gun. She became a
wonderful bird dog. I have often
wondered about what I saw as an inhumane method of training, but once past the
barrier, it never bothered Tanya. Rather
than being afraid of Carmon or mean with him, she seemed to love him with every
fiber of her being as he loved her. She
was the first to greet him when he came home, and lavished him with all her affection. She was not the family’s pet; she was his
- 100%! It was a relationship which, I’ll
admit, I have never understood.
~ ~ ~
I learned an interesting lesson from
Tanya. Purebred animals are vet magnets,
particularly when they are pregnant. We
hadn’t had Tanya long when Carmon discovered that one of his hunting buddies
had an AKC registered male German Short-haired Pointer. I’m not sure what arrangements they made
regarding stud services, but soon Tanya was pregnant and I was to have my first
lesson in canine midwifery.I was home alone when the puppies came. In fact, Tanya had already delivered one of them when I discovered her in her new bed in the utility room. I watched and waited as an hour passed, then two. There were no more puppies, but I could tell that Tanya was feeling miserable and sick. I called Carmon at work and he told me to put Tanya and the puppy in my car and drive them to the vets. This I did, even though my car was a tiny little compact with hardly enough floor room in the back for the dog to sit, much less lie. The vet checked her and said that there were several more puppies which needed to be born. Since Tanya’s labor had somehow mysteriously stopped, the vet gave her a shot of pitocin - a drug to induce labor. He told me that I’d better hurry and take her home, as the drug often worked quickly. That was an understatement.
One puppy was born before we got out of the parking lot. Another two arrived on the drive home. A fourth and fifth made their appearances in the driveway and puppy number six made it as far as the back door. By the time I got Tanya and all the puppies into the birthing bed, the birthing was over, my car was a mess, and I was exhausted. The biggest pain of all arrived a week later: THE BILL FROM THE VET!
© Gebara Education,
2001. No portion of this book may be
copied by any method without the express written permission of the author
Picture of adult pointer from http://www.dogfamily.org/tag/german-shorthaired-pointer-2
Picture of pointer with puppies from www.puppiesale.org
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