She was a chocolate lab born to a backyard breeder in Shasta County. I found her in the classified ads for $500 — the best money I ever spent.
We took her home at six weeks. We named her Gaddy. That’s duck-hunter slang for “gadwall,” a type of duck. But we never called her that. She was always Gadders or Gads.
That first night, she slept on my bare chest as I laid on the floor. She whimpered for her mother and her litter mates — all puppy breath, pokey little claws and velvet-soft wiggles. I told her she had a new family now. And she did. She was a fine friend to our two babies who came the next year and the year after.
When she was about 8 months old, we started working with a trainer named Burke Wardall. He was an incredible trainer — of people. He trained me to train her, and we trained her well.
“You’ve got a real winner there,” Burke told me once after watching her make a beeline 200-yard retrieve on some training bumpers he’d set out across a couple of ponds.
She was a missile, single-minded and focused on whatever it was I sent her out to bring back to my outstretched hand.
Not even a year old, she brought me her first Canada goose in Lassen County. She was so small she practically pushed it to me with her nose across a frozen pond, her paws slipping and sliding across the ice. I laughed. I cried a little, too. I was proud. She wanted nothing more than to make me happy. She was a winner, like Burke said.
Oh, I wish you could have seen her in her prime a few years later. I once watched that dog swim and chop with her front paws through yards of ice to get me a namesake duck that had sailed across a half-frozen pond.
She once towed me and my hunting buddy, all our gear and the ducks she retrieved that morning, in my tippy decoy sled across a canal that was too deep for us to wade. She’d just shivered for most of the morning on a icy muskrat lodge waiting for ducks to fall, but her tail was wagging the whole time as she made the three round trips across the canal with us in tow. We don’t deserve our dogs.
In her older years, too many shotgun blasts took her hearing, and she wasn’t as fast across the marsh as she once was, but, boy, she got smart. A younger dog would have jumped into the patch of tules and plowed through the tangle to find the bird. Not Gadders. She would walk around the clump of reeds and stick her nose in every couple of feet and give a sniff. I knew she was on the scent when her tail would start wagging. She’d gingerly wade into the tules and come out with the bird, more often than not.
I retired her a couple of years ago. She spent her days mostly sleeping on her bed in the air conditioning at our home in Antelope. Her favorite times, though, were at my mom and dad’s up in Mt. Shasta. She loved it there. It’s so lovely and cool in the summers. My mom always gave her too many treats. She took long naps under the big cedar. She went on quiet walks with my dad across our property, the smell of deer and jackrabbits everywhere.
Over the last year, she pretended to be annoyed by the dumb, goofy puppy we brought home to be my new hunting partner. The pup wants nothing more but to play and play. Ol’ Gadders gave it a go once in a while, too, even though it was getting harder for her back legs to hold her up if she tried to run and play tug-of-war.
On Father’s Day, she looked at me when I tried to coax her up to go outside. When she pushed herself up off her bed, her eyes said, “Oh, my friend. This hurts. It hurts. I don’t like this.”
The next morning, she couldn’t get up at all, until I put my arms around her belly. She’d been losing a lot of weight. Her tail barely wagged any more, even at meal time. She was covered in fatty tumors.
It was time.
Thirteen years after she slept on my chest that first night, we went on her last hunt.
The wife and kids cried and said their goodbyes before I loaded her up in the old pickup that’s driven me and her across the country and over miles and miles of dusty, rutted refuge roads.
We drove up to my buddy’s ranch in Mt. Shasta. There’s a little stock pond out there, down below a green meadow where my buddy and I used to haul hay bales when we were kids. She liked to swim and fetch there. There are cow pies to roll in and goose turds to gobble. It is dog heaven.
Four mallards jumped up off the pond when I turned past the stock gate and into the meadow.
I got out a camp chair and her bed. I sat and watched as she waded on sore legs into the cool water. She didn’t stay in the pond long before she pulled herself out. She limped over and laid down on the bed next to me. A true lab, always happiest when wet. She was on my left side — the same side she always sat through all those sunrises over frost-covered marshes.
I sometimes like to imagine what it’s like to perceive the world through your nose the way a dog does. Their sense of smell is 40 times more powerful than ours is. I wonder what smells she smelled in those last moments. I know there were ducks, green grass and cows. What else could she perceive drifting on that cool early summer Siskiyou County breeze?
She was looking up at Mount Shasta when she died.
I buried her a few feet away under some cedars.
One of them has a wood duck nesting box hanging on it. I’d like to think that some day there might be little wood duck hatchlings standing on the cairn I built over her. I know those mallards we chased off will be back to keep her company.
It was a good death for a very good girl.
We took her home at six weeks. We named her Gaddy. That’s duck-hunter slang for “gadwall,” a type of duck. But we never called her that. She was always Gadders or Gads.
That first night, she slept on my bare chest as I laid on the floor. She whimpered for her mother and her litter mates — all puppy breath, pokey little claws and velvet-soft wiggles. I told her she had a new family now. And she did. She was a fine friend to our two babies who came the next year and the year after.
When she was about 8 months old, we started working with a trainer named Burke Wardall. He was an incredible trainer — of people. He trained me to train her, and we trained her well.
“You’ve got a real winner there,” Burke told me once after watching her make a beeline 200-yard retrieve on some training bumpers he’d set out across a couple of ponds.
She was a missile, single-minded and focused on whatever it was I sent her out to bring back to my outstretched hand.
Not even a year old, she brought me her first Canada goose in Lassen County. She was so small she practically pushed it to me with her nose across a frozen pond, her paws slipping and sliding across the ice. I laughed. I cried a little, too. I was proud. She wanted nothing more than to make me happy. She was a winner, like Burke said.
Oh, I wish you could have seen her in her prime a few years later. I once watched that dog swim and chop with her front paws through yards of ice to get me a namesake duck that had sailed across a half-frozen pond.
She once towed me and my hunting buddy, all our gear and the ducks she retrieved that morning, in my tippy decoy sled across a canal that was too deep for us to wade. She’d just shivered for most of the morning on a icy muskrat lodge waiting for ducks to fall, but her tail was wagging the whole time as she made the three round trips across the canal with us in tow. We don’t deserve our dogs.
In her older years, too many shotgun blasts took her hearing, and she wasn’t as fast across the marsh as she once was, but, boy, she got smart. A younger dog would have jumped into the patch of tules and plowed through the tangle to find the bird. Not Gadders. She would walk around the clump of reeds and stick her nose in every couple of feet and give a sniff. I knew she was on the scent when her tail would start wagging. She’d gingerly wade into the tules and come out with the bird, more often than not.
I retired her a couple of years ago. She spent her days mostly sleeping on her bed in the air conditioning at our home in Antelope. Her favorite times, though, were at my mom and dad’s up in Mt. Shasta. She loved it there. It’s so lovely and cool in the summers. My mom always gave her too many treats. She took long naps under the big cedar. She went on quiet walks with my dad across our property, the smell of deer and jackrabbits everywhere.
Over the last year, she pretended to be annoyed by the dumb, goofy puppy we brought home to be my new hunting partner. The pup wants nothing more but to play and play. Ol’ Gadders gave it a go once in a while, too, even though it was getting harder for her back legs to hold her up if she tried to run and play tug-of-war.
On Father’s Day, she looked at me when I tried to coax her up to go outside. When she pushed herself up off her bed, her eyes said, “Oh, my friend. This hurts. It hurts. I don’t like this.”
The next morning, she couldn’t get up at all, until I put my arms around her belly. She’d been losing a lot of weight. Her tail barely wagged any more, even at meal time. She was covered in fatty tumors.
It was time.
Thirteen years after she slept on my chest that first night, we went on her last hunt.
The wife and kids cried and said their goodbyes before I loaded her up in the old pickup that’s driven me and her across the country and over miles and miles of dusty, rutted refuge roads.
We drove up to my buddy’s ranch in Mt. Shasta. There’s a little stock pond out there, down below a green meadow where my buddy and I used to haul hay bales when we were kids. She liked to swim and fetch there. There are cow pies to roll in and goose turds to gobble. It is dog heaven.
Four mallards jumped up off the pond when I turned past the stock gate and into the meadow.
I got out a camp chair and her bed. I sat and watched as she waded on sore legs into the cool water. She didn’t stay in the pond long before she pulled herself out. She limped over and laid down on the bed next to me. A true lab, always happiest when wet. She was on my left side — the same side she always sat through all those sunrises over frost-covered marshes.
I sometimes like to imagine what it’s like to perceive the world through your nose the way a dog does. Their sense of smell is 40 times more powerful than ours is. I wonder what smells she smelled in those last moments. I know there were ducks, green grass and cows. What else could she perceive drifting on that cool early summer Siskiyou County breeze?
She was looking up at Mount Shasta when she died.
I buried her a few feet away under some cedars.
One of them has a wood duck nesting box hanging on it. I’d like to think that some day there might be little wood duck hatchlings standing on the cairn I built over her. I know those mallards we chased off will be back to keep her company.
It was a good death for a very good girl.
