"The Rainmaker"
One afternoon following a dove shoot on a nearby farm a couple of autumns ago, I brought home a lot more than a Zip-Loc bag full of fresh dove breasts. The birds had flown well that day, and by late afternoon, the air was filled with doves, plugs, smoke and the percussive reports of about a dozen scatterguns.
While most of us were relegated to trotting across the uneven ground to pick up our doves, some of the guys had help from their four-legged friends. The day’s rag-tag brace had consisted of a couple of black labs and a pointer of some kind.
Somewhere in mix of the dust-raising retriever antics, another dog spontaneously appeared in the middle of the field. At first I could not discern the breed of the new dog, and thought to myself that a hunter must have switched out a dog in favor of this one. I noted he was a funny looking little thing, though, with his reddish coat and bushy, salt-and-pepper tail.
The strange little dog ran around the middle of the dove field for the rest of the shoot. He leapt in the air and snapped at low-flying doves and chased fallen birds before they were retrieved by the professionals on hand. When the farmer determined it was time to rest his field and announced the end of the shoot, we policed up our doves, our buckets, our guns and our hulls. As I bounced along the furrows in my golf cart en route to meet the others to help clean birds, I saw that the little red dog had lain down at one end of the field and was watching us intently.
Upon my return home, my then-three-year-old son asked me to take him to see the dove field. We hopped on the golf cart and headed over to the farm, where we rode around and checked out the cows and the peanuts and the ponds. Then we parked on the edge of a pecan orchard and watched the late afternoon flight of doves light in the tilled field I had hunted earlier.
When the sun began to set, we took off on one more run through the farm. As we skirted the edge of a field, I noticed the little dog running behind the golf cart, his tongue flapping in our dusty wake. He followed us everywhere we went on our last leg around the farm. He even followed us home. While my son thought the “red doggie” was neat, I paid him little mind. I put the golf cart in the garage and went inside.
Later that evening, my wife asked me about the little red dog that was lying in the middle of our driveway keeping watch over the yard. I explained that he had crashed the dove shoot and then followed us home. “He’s cute,” she said. “Uh-oh,” I thought.
Several weeks and even more disagreements between my wife and me later, the little red dog had acquired the name Scamp, a round of vaccinations and a new home in our back yard.
Now any time it rains, Scamp is allowed into our laundry room. While other dogs might naturally seek shelter under the children’s trampoline or their large covered swing set, Scamp insists on coming inside to escape the weather. At first, Scamp toughed out the light drizzles and short showers; he only came in for the big rains. Soon, however, the quick study was showing up at the back door whimpering any time the sky turned dark, and he knew easy marks when he saw them.
I noticed not long after Scamp began finagling his way into the laundry room at the first hint of even overcast skies, that we entered a winter weather pattern where it rained heavily off and on for about three weeks straight. Sure enough, Scamp virtually lived in our laundry room for the better part of the winter.
I don’t know how Scamp is able to conjure up inclement weather any time he doesn’t feel like sleeping outside, but more than once I have peered out the blinds into the back yard and spied him performing an odd little dance around the pecan trees while wearing a headdress made of dove feathers. I suspect that has something to do with it.
(c) Roger Guilian 2009
While most of us were relegated to trotting across the uneven ground to pick up our doves, some of the guys had help from their four-legged friends. The day’s rag-tag brace had consisted of a couple of black labs and a pointer of some kind.
Somewhere in mix of the dust-raising retriever antics, another dog spontaneously appeared in the middle of the field. At first I could not discern the breed of the new dog, and thought to myself that a hunter must have switched out a dog in favor of this one. I noted he was a funny looking little thing, though, with his reddish coat and bushy, salt-and-pepper tail.
The strange little dog ran around the middle of the dove field for the rest of the shoot. He leapt in the air and snapped at low-flying doves and chased fallen birds before they were retrieved by the professionals on hand. When the farmer determined it was time to rest his field and announced the end of the shoot, we policed up our doves, our buckets, our guns and our hulls. As I bounced along the furrows in my golf cart en route to meet the others to help clean birds, I saw that the little red dog had lain down at one end of the field and was watching us intently.
Upon my return home, my then-three-year-old son asked me to take him to see the dove field. We hopped on the golf cart and headed over to the farm, where we rode around and checked out the cows and the peanuts and the ponds. Then we parked on the edge of a pecan orchard and watched the late afternoon flight of doves light in the tilled field I had hunted earlier.
When the sun began to set, we took off on one more run through the farm. As we skirted the edge of a field, I noticed the little dog running behind the golf cart, his tongue flapping in our dusty wake. He followed us everywhere we went on our last leg around the farm. He even followed us home. While my son thought the “red doggie” was neat, I paid him little mind. I put the golf cart in the garage and went inside.
Later that evening, my wife asked me about the little red dog that was lying in the middle of our driveway keeping watch over the yard. I explained that he had crashed the dove shoot and then followed us home. “He’s cute,” she said. “Uh-oh,” I thought.
Several weeks and even more disagreements between my wife and me later, the little red dog had acquired the name Scamp, a round of vaccinations and a new home in our back yard.
Now any time it rains, Scamp is allowed into our laundry room. While other dogs might naturally seek shelter under the children’s trampoline or their large covered swing set, Scamp insists on coming inside to escape the weather. At first, Scamp toughed out the light drizzles and short showers; he only came in for the big rains. Soon, however, the quick study was showing up at the back door whimpering any time the sky turned dark, and he knew easy marks when he saw them.
I noticed not long after Scamp began finagling his way into the laundry room at the first hint of even overcast skies, that we entered a winter weather pattern where it rained heavily off and on for about three weeks straight. Sure enough, Scamp virtually lived in our laundry room for the better part of the winter.
I don’t know how Scamp is able to conjure up inclement weather any time he doesn’t feel like sleeping outside, but more than once I have peered out the blinds into the back yard and spied him performing an odd little dance around the pecan trees while wearing a headdress made of dove feathers. I suspect that has something to do with it.
(c) Roger Guilian 2009
posted by Days Afield Host | 4:15 PM
