Buckoby Paul Fersen
It’s autumn. The trees are slowly suffocating their leaves in the rubescent ritual that is foliage and the wind whispers the first hint of brutality. For the hunter, it’s wait’s end. For the dogs in our lives, it’s show time.
Pickett, my chocolate Labrador will be four this season, having first opened his eyes in July of ‘02, now already a veteran of three seasons. The first time I saw him was the day I picked him up at a kennel in Colorado in mid-September having sent a deposit sight unseen on pedigree and parent’s pictures alone. His first act for me was to retrieve a toy mouse and bring it proudly back to my feet, drop it and look up with the expectation of yet another round. Sold.
Now to get him home. I was not about to stick him in the cargo hold. I found out that given his size, he could ride with me in an under-the-seat kennel. Fortunately he was too young to understand these kennels are generally reserved for the use of well-coiffed and bejeweled women with smarmy, aloof cats or little dogs that yip. Dogs shouldn’t yip. Pickett came through the experience unscathed and with his hunting genes in tact. On a side note, if I ever need to find another woman in my life, I will simply go to an airport with an 8-week old Lab puppy. As my son so ably puts it, “a sick chick magnet”. Translated that means I was surrounded by adoring women the minute I hit the door with Pickett in tow and the flight attendant even moved me to an empty seat in first class. His first day he was already taking care of his master.
Going through security I set off the alarm and had to be searched. Since Pickett couldn’t go through the X-ray machine in his kennel, he had to be searched as well, the assumption being, I suppose, that at eight weeks he could storm the cockpit and eat the crew. I stood there in the standard search position with arms out and Pickett sleeping comfortably in my outstretched hand, five feet above the floor. He woke just long enough to relieve himself in my hand, leaving a puddle on the security footprint pad, much to the consternation of the security guard conducting the search. While I am forced each flight to remain silent and accept this degradation, Pickett expressed my sentiments exactly and was from that moment, my dog.
There are good dogs and then there are great dogs. Pickett seems destined for greatness, at least as it applies to my relationship with dogs. I’ve had good ones, but none who’ve responded to me like this one. I’ve come to the conclusion that much of this has to do with me, having chosen Pickett at this particular time in my life when my patience is at its zenith and age has cast its mellow spell. I no longer fret over unfulfilled expectations and as such my dog and my children have exceeded them. Funny how that works.
Pickett is a marvel of breeding and genetics. Over the centuries his forbearers developed a propensity to chase (retrievers), while other dogs developed the desire to stalk (pointers) and others the desire to herd or guard or yip as it were. Dog anthropologists have come to the conclusion that dogs as a species are only about 15,000 years old, an infant in the grand scheme of evolution. Man did not domesticate the wolf as most people believe. The dog self-evolved when man stopped being nomadic and settled into villages. The village dump became an instant and easy food source for certain canine type species. The ones that had the least fear, ran the shortest distance when confronted with man, and returned the quickest, began to interbreed and evolution accelerated exponentially, creating a creature comfortable with man. Thus the dog. The prototype of this first dog is called the “village dog” and from these dogs came all the breeds we now know, including young Pickett.
Hard to believe that the dogs we see strutting and fretting around Westminster all evolved in a mere 15,000 years from a few dogs hanging out at the dump. I would imagine that some French poodle named Chevalier would be as disgusted with the notion that he evolved from dump dogs as some people are about being descended from apes. Not exactly Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, but Pickett has no such notions of grandeur. I bet if I let Pickett loose near a dump, he’d probably think he was in the Garden of Eden. I’m not quite sure what it is about Labradors, but they have a propensity to eat anything as long as it can be swallowed and even then they’re up to a challenge. Old Yoo Hoo, the now deceased and famous truck-driving dog of years past, once ate an entire sofa save the frame. For Pickett, a frozen cow patty is just as much fun as a Frisbee and a lot tastier to his mind. Over the past four years he’s eaten three pairs of reading glasses, two remotes, two pillows, numerous boots and shoes, a jar of peanut butter, a lacrosse stick, three or four golf balls and many other items too numerous to mention (not unlike the listing of a Bus Mars auction). Remarkably he lives to tell the tale.
This hunting season Pickett will enter his prime. His first year he sat inside my coat and watched the festivities with great interest and by the 16th week of his life dragged his first duck back to my feet. By the end of his second season he was charging through ice strewn rivers in search of his game, entering the water with Herculean leaps and reveling in the boat ride home, his coat covered in ice and frost. I have loved all my dogs, but this one seems destined to be the one I will remember most.
A few years ago I wrote a short introduction to a dog catalog. It was before I met Pickett, but it seems prophetic. Of all the things I’ve ever written, it is my favorite.
“We aren’t house-proud. If we were, we wouldn’t abide the scratches on the door-frame, the holes in the screen, the darkened shine of worn spots on the chair. We would wince at the mottled carpet and fret at the hair clinging to our clothes.
We don’t. If anything, we lovers of dogs are a tolerant lot, finding greater value in the unabashed affection of our friend than immaculate sofas. Shoes can be replaced, but heroic retrieves are timeless.
Without dogs, our houses are cold receptacles for things. Dogs make a fire warmer with their curled presence. They wake us, greet us, protect us and ultimately carve a place in our hearts and our history. On reflection, our lives are often referenced in parts, these parts defined by the all too short lives of our dogs.”
Pickett’s life will most assuredly be a reference point for the best part of my life.
Paul Fersen is a regular columnist for Stratton Magazine.
