It's been a couple of weeks now, so the sting isn't quite as intense, but I still hear her bark when I pull into the driveway and expect to stumble over her in the early morning darkness. She was way more talented as a retriever than I was as a trainer, but somehow we managed to make that work pretty well for a couple of years of running hunt tests, and we RARELY lost a duck when she was hunting with us. Granted, she would at times break, but that was only because she LOVED to retrieve and I think she felt I was more focused on scaring them away than actually hitting them with my shots. I'm convinced she would have run herself into the ground retrieving if given the chance.
I helped my dad train retrievers when growing up, but she was the first that was "my dog" and by far was the best first retriever I could have hoped to have, though her hunting and field trial days were limited due to hip dysplasia. She didn't get to hunt the last few years, and only to a limited extent for a few years before that, but it will still be painful when I head out for the first teal hunt in a few weeks and she's not following me to the door, wanting to go.
We'll miss you girl!
The perils of duck hunting are great- especially for the duck. ~Walter Cronkite
