Share a memory of Dave, impossible. Share a thousand memories, very doable.
I met Dave through a mutual contact, he wanted some help training his dog and the woman serving a meal at the restaurant gave him my name because I had trained her two dogs.
I worked with him on applying obedience training and on solving some behavioral issues. During one of the sessions I brought one of my dogs as a distraction. I do this as a matter of course to test the client dog's progress.
This particular dog was one that I used for hunting.
Dave expressed an interest in hunting with me and over the dog for pheasants.
At that time, Dave was a proud owner of a sports car. I do not recall the make or model but I'm pretty sure the color was red.
Dave had that car waxed so that I could see my reflection in the paint of the hood. The chrome on the wheels was so polished that I needed sun glasses to look at them when the sun was bright in the sky. The tires had some type of shiny finished coat on the rubber surface.
While I was very impressed with his car, he was equally observant with the fact that I loaded three hunting dogs in my pickup and closed the hatch lid on the cap.
There were kennel boxes back there for the dogs as a way of transporting them safely and keeping them warm while covered with mud, burrs, and who knows what else from the fields.
The next hunting season Dave pulled up with a pickup truck after trading in the sports car.
I thoroughly enjoyed watching Dave develop from a novice hunter, learning how to follow or flank the dogs to be in the best position to have the opportunity for a clean shot at a wildly flushing, cackling, fast moving pheasant.
Dave loved the challenge of crashing through the rows of high standing corn or trudging through a muddy swamp and wet bottom land, or up onto brushy fields of thistle and thorns.
Following the dogs and watching with nervous excitement and anticipation of that bird flushing, could be right in front of the dog or wildly running a good distance ahead or the bird could have circled back and flushed right behind you.
A very special hunting memory the we frequently reminisced about was when Remmy, his chocolate lab, was around two years old and had developed into just a superb young hunting dog.
Snow fell all night and the hay field had clumps of snow creating drifts and pockets of little snow caves.
Cold with an early morning sun and a clear sky and not a whisper of wind, absolutely still and the fresh snow allowed us to follow the dog with quiet foot steps.
Remmy was moving along methodically searching for scent of a sitting bird. Steam was coming out of his mouth as stepped left a few paces and back to the right but all the while thirty yards ahead of the two hunters spread apart covering both flanks.
The snow clump exploded, Remmy jumped up in the air but the bird was fully launched, straight up. The cackling was deafening and steam was coming out of the birds mouth as the sound of the beating wings was cracking the sound barrier and the bird went from lifting up into a speed glide. The pheasant was sailing down and around to Dave's right. Really not a good angle for Dave to take a shot but a great angle for the bird to escape.
Remmy was well behind but in pursuit so Dave, leading the bird with the front bead on his shotgun, set off a charge.
The bird landed seventy, no maybe eighty yards away. Lost in that hay field and probably running. Pheasants are very fleet of foot and can quickly maneuver turns on a dime.
We watched ten minutes while the dog, nose down in the snow, tail wagging but not very much kept moving and working to pick up and follow the scent. The wagging of a labs tail indicates how close he is to a bird.
This was a very difficult assignment for an experienced dog and Remmy was still an up and comer.
Dave and I decided to whistle the dog back. That way we could circle around, flush other birds and maybe come across the bird, downed and clearly wounded.
Remmy, about one hundred yards away and twenty minutes of searching was probably not going to find......
No wait! Look at his tail frantically waving and whirling!
Good boy, he found the bird and was retrieving it. Remmy was holding his head up high, so proud, we were so proud and praising him in a manner never duplicated, just an outstanding flush, search and retrieve.
The whole episode was truly one for the books.
Through the years and especially the last days of Remmy's ability to hunt, Dave and I would recount every aspect of that hunt and amazingly remember something we missed. We would always finish by praising Remmy and I believe he knew and remembered that particular hunt as well.
Sadly Remmy is gone and even more sadly Dave is gone.
I will forever miss my hunting buddies and will wait for the time when I can join them and we can joyfully reminisce that once in a lifetime moment that we shared.
