Gone, Not Forgotten: Hunting dogs create a special bond and lifetime of memories
Published 11:30 pm Friday, May 17, 2024
- Hunts are often special, but time spent in the field or on the water with a hunting dog are even better. For years they are your partner, but unfortunately one day they are gone. (Thomas Knight/Courtesy)
I remember the day I picked the puppy up on a farm near Boerne. It was a sunny, warm day and a pack of Labrador puppies were scurrying this direction than that while their mother took a quick break.
“How do you know which one to pick,” I asked the owner. He shook his head and honestly admitted he did not know. Maybe just the one that seems the most energetic and alert.
The puppies’ parents were both hunting dogs. Not polished field trial dogs, but ones that were hard working on hunts for dove, quail or ducks in South Texas.
I watched the litter run around and eventually started to focus on one or two, before eventually settling on a black one that to me just stood out for one reason or another. With the dog in my lap I got in the truck and headed east back to Tyler. For the entire drive I was amazed because as rambunctious as the puppy had been in the yard it had become so docile in my lap. I do not think it moved or made a peep the entire way.
The dog, who was later named Zeta, was not going to be mine. It was for my son, Thomas, who was off at school in Lubbock. As an East Texas boy transplanted to the South Plains it did not take long for him to find the waterfowl hunting opportunities in the area. He never admitted it, but I am pretty sure his class load was scheduled around his hunting instead of his hunting scheduled around his classes.
He was so bitten by the bug that instead of getting a parttime job at a restaurant or whatever, he became a guide for a local waterfowl outfitter. I do not know how much he hit the schoolbooks, but he became efficient using a map and his status as a Tech student to meet landowners and get access to their land.
That is how the bond between the two developed. From the opening day of dove season to the High Plains duck season, pheasant season and on until the closing day of the West Zone goose season the two spent most mornings hunting playa lakes or wheat fields. The mornings they were not hunting they were scouting.
“It seems like yesterday we were out on her first hunt, a dove hunt north of Lubbock, at roughly 6-months-old. The retrieving wasn’t great, but she had a heck of a time chasing a jack rabbit across a quarter-section cotton field,” Thomas said.
For four years in the fall and winter, if the truck was running Zeta was probably in it. It is hard to say which one of them enjoyed it the most. I know conditions never mattered to her. She hunted dove during what can be brutal September heat around Lubbock. I duck hunted with them once near Paris on a single-degree morning when her fur turned white with ice crystals on each retrieve, and she never stopped until we did.
Like her mother, Zeta was home schooled. Whatever she did well Thomas had taught her. The warts, well they were his too. But the one thing about the dog was that she had the nose and the desire to be a hunter. “From can to can’t” as the old bream-fishing guide on Caddo Lake once described it.
“She was no professionally trained dog because I’m not a professional trainer, nor did she have the papers to make her an ‘elite’ dog, but I can assure you she would run toe to toe with some of the best when it came to hunting. Anytime the gun cases came out of the closet she knew it was game time and would wait for you at the door,” Thomas said.
By the time Thomas graduated from Tech, Zeta already had a hard-earned resume built on not hundreds, but thousands of retrieves.
Of course, graduation means changes in life. Moves to areas with less hunting opportunity and jobs where skipping for hunts is frowned on much more than when dumping a class. Their hunts together became less frequent, but still as important to both.
Then, in what seemed like the blink of an eye, Zeta started getting old. The hair on her muzzle turned white and her gait was hobbled from arthritis. As a vet friend explained it once, two dogs may be the same age, but because of what is required of a hunting dog its body can be much older.
Zeta got to where she could barely swim, and then it became hard for her to even stand up. Thomas took her on one more duck hunt a few years ago. A quick outing where she was able to retrieve a pair of ducks.
“Our last hunt will probably go down as my favorite. The hunt should have been easy, a group of buffleheads on a local pond outside Tyler allowing for an easy jump shoot scenario. A few hours later, and not as easily as expected, we had those birds knocked down and Zeta had successfully, but slowly, retrieved them for me one last time,” Thomas said.
I am sure you can imagine where this story is going. Because of her age and illnesses that she has been plagued by, Thomas had to put her down at the age of 16. Never an easy task, and especially difficult for hunters because of that special bond created with a dog. He buried her just above a lake where he and his brother, Tristan, grew up fishing.
Thomas words here came from an obituary he wrote. Here are his final words.
“As humans we sign ourselves up for this day when we take on the life of a pet, and although it will be a tough goodbye the memories made will never perish. She will be a tough one to replace, and quite frankly may not be replaceable, but I’m sure I’ll give a few more pups a chance. Rest in peace Zeta and thank you for the years of loyalty, memories, and retrieves.”