May 17th, 2010 OUR DOGS

Are you the type of person who gets out and works your dog in

all types of weather all year long? Does your neighbor tell stories

about you at the community picnic concerning your training at I:00 in the

morning? Did he ever ask you why you can’t just walk your dog like a normal person? Is

your car or truck cluttered with bumpers, check cords, loose blank .22 shells, and various

training devices? Worse yet, does your vehicle smell like a duck? You can always tell a person

is a retriever fanatic when you walk in their house and two retrievers greet you with big

sloppy tongues and noses. It’s a dead give away when their house is festooned with ribbons,

puppy pictures, and all the art work features at least one dog. If this sounds like you, don’t

start flipping through the yellow pages for counseling services. You are part of a growing

number of people who share in the appreciation and devotion to their canine companions.

People have asked why we spend so much time with our dogs and I’ve tried to come up

with a sensible answer that doesn’t sound too extreme or may even make some sense to

the dogless world. I first tell them it’s just a hobby. It is a hobby, but it is definetly not “just” a

hobby. Hobbies are something you do as a past time and then put away and go on with the

rest of your life. our dogs seem to be part of our total lives.They are with us every possible

minute, some of us are even lucky enough to be able to take the dogs to work and there

are some who even let their dogs sleep with them. That’s not just a hobby. our dogs are

more valuable to us than family heirlooms and I’ve even rationalized with myself that I’m

doing this as an investment.

I’ve heard a good seasoned dog will bring a handsome sum but money can’t buy the feeling

of satisfaction we get when the dogs we have trained so long and hard make those impossible

retrieves time after time. An investment? Maybe, but the cost is high, the return low and

even if you sold a dog you had trained and doubled your original investment you are left

with an empty feeling like a member of the family was taken hostage or something. You don’t

get that feeling when you cash in your IBM stock.

There are other reasons for spending so much time and effort on our dogs …. like, I’m a

hunter and I’m doing this because of my hunting. I wonder how many of us have our dogs

because we are hunters, or is it, we are hunters because we have our dogs. Several years ago

I was invited to go duck hunting and couldn’t take my dog and although our hunt was successful

I swore I would never hunt waterfowl again without a dog. There is something missing

in the total scenario without the dog. It’s like playing baseball without a catcher. Our

dogs are definetly part of our hunting paraphernalia but it is not the total reason for our

devotion to training and our affection for our dogs. Their hunting skills are only part of what

attracts us to these fine animals.

When I’m done trying to explain our dogs to a person not in the club I realize that the dogs

are really a part of ourselves.They are an extension of our personalities and an elongation of

our physical self.We use their eyes to mark falls, their ears to detect whistling wings or

someone approaching, their noses to find game both dead and alive. and we use their company

to comfort us. They are as important to us as the guide dog is to the blind or the support

dog to the handicapped. The dogs are more than just a hobby or an investment and I’m

not sure when they become more than just pets but the evidence is there that they are

definetly more than that. It is this extension of ourselves which urges us to do more than

just feed our dogs. We belong to this club because we are associated with others who share

our feelings and thus we become somewhat of a subculture. spending our weekends at Hunt

Test and club functions like some folks attend church. It is with great satisfaction that we live

our lives with these magnificent animals. knowing we become more humane because of our

canine counterparts. knowing we are fulfilling our dogs and ourselves through our involvement

with them and knowing that the people who are without dogs are missing a part of

themselves that cannot be replaced with stamp collecting or a bulging stock portfolio. Our

dogs are part of US.

Joe gave me some of his articles from past club newsletters and I thought this one should be

shared again. We should all remember why this club was founded and why we are apart of it.

THANKS JOE!!