Well, It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time!

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By Chris Robinson

I wonder just how many times I or my hunting dog-owning pals have uttered that phrase, always as a prelude to recounting some action that seemed perfectly good, sane and sensible at the time but ultimately resulted in total disaster. If we had ten bucks for every time we’ve had to use those particular words, it’s odds-on that all of us would now be so wealthy we’d be able to hire others to actually execute what we think are “great” solutions to a dilemma that really turn out, at best, to be a totally lousy idea.

It probably all started for me several dog generations ago. We were hunting diver ducks from a blind on the Republican River which flows along the Nebraska/Kansas border. The blind, a solidly-built, permanent structure, had a door on its upstream side. As we waded through the shallow water enroute to the blind, our boots stirred up mud and muck which released effluvium so rank it made those old hydrogen sulfide experiments in high school chemistry class seem like Coco Chanel’s finest in comparison. One of my hunting partners was heard to remark, “Woowee! Boy, that’s some ripe stuff! You wouldn’t want to dip anything that wasn’t covered with rubber in this, that’s for sure! I’m not even sure we ought to handle ducks that have been in this water without rubber gloves. It might eat your hand off.”

It was a productive hunt with a number of single ducks and pairs of ducks swinging over our decoys. However, after the first couple of retrieves, my dog figured out where the door to the blind was located and when he burst through it looking for a duck to retrieve after a missed shot, I decided changes needed to be made. So, I moved to the end seat in the blind closest the door on my right and made the dog sit to my left, the thought being since the birds had been flying right to left all day, if he tried to break on a miss, I’d be in position to block the exit. It seemed like a good idea at the time, anyway.

The next action was a flock of bluebills that for some inexplicable reason flew down the river from left to right. When the birds swung across the decoys, I said to my partners, “Take ‘em” as I rose into a half crouch and swung the shotgun on the lead duck. The dog apparently thought I was talking to him rather than my partners although I don’t know why because he was always sent for a retrieve on his name and certainly not on “Take ‘em” which didn’t sound at all like his name. He charged the door and hit me with his 105 pounds of pure power just as I was in the most unbalanced position possible driving me headfirst out the door and face down in that godawful water. He then proceeded to run up my back and use my shoulders as a springboard to launch himself into the river to make the retrieve.

As I dragged myself upright out of the water and mud, I fully expected to see the shotgun crumble followed closely by my hands and face disappearing in a puff of smoke. Fortunately, our estimate of the toxicity of the river was a bit off but the stench was so horrendous it caused near terminal gagging not only for me but in anyone in close proximity and even the dog flat out refused to come anywhere near me. There was nothing to do but wade out of the river, trudge back to the truck and change clothes. However, even with fresh clothing, there was still an aura of the river clinging to me that did not completely disappear until that evening after a long, hot shower using yellow G.I. soap, a product designed to eliminate the stink of a mixture of cordite, blood, mud and several days worth of fear-generated sweat. The clothes that had taken the dip in the river were tightly encased in a plastic bag to prevent the odor from becoming a permanent part of the truck’s atmosphere and it took two trips through the complete wash cycle including one where the cleaning agent wasn’t Tide but rather the same Odormute® product as I use to get rid of skunk odor on my dogs to get the clothes to the point where getting within ten feet of them wouldn’t cause you to retch. For awhile, I thought they might never give up the malodor and would have to be burned.

A hunting dog magazine editor I know also had an experience with moving water only in his case, it was not stink but rather hypothermia that was the issue. He was hunting quail along an unfrozen, fast-moving creek in mid-December with his Irish Setter. It was one of those cold, blustery days when points are few and far between and when the dog does find a bird, the hunter is usually too cold to shoot accurately. About the time when, cold and tired, he was starting to wonder what he was doing trudging through the snow on the creek bank, his setter’s locator started beeping on the other side of the creek.

How and when the dog had crossed the creek had escaped her owner as, by his own admission, he was more focused on his own discomfort than on the whereabouts of his dog. Unable to see what or even if she was pointing he faced a dilemma–how to get to the other side of the creek without doing the obvious which was wade it since the water was at least thigh-deep. Then, eureka! Right before his eyes a solution appeared. Just ahead was a log that appeared to reach just about to the other bank. His eyeball estimate was that the end wasn’t more than about five feet from the opposite bank, an easy jump to dry land. When he had nearly reached the end of the log it was clear his reconnaissance skills had failed. It was clear what had looked like an intact log from his position on the bank was actually only a remnant a good ten feet from the bank. The rest had long since rotted and washed downstream. Still he figured if he moved fast, what remained would hold him until he could jump to the other bank. It seemed, he said, like a good idea at the time.

However, when he took off, his jump attempt was not only off rotted wood that gave way instantly at the touch of his foot but it was also extremely slippery. The upshot was that he was dumped, full length, into some VERY COLD water. While he understandably did not linger long in this predicament, he was still extremely wet when he finally reached the other side spewing equal amounts of creek water and profanity from his mouth. Meanwhile, the setter, who had not been on point and had apparently merely stopped to look for her owner, had re-crossed the creek, was now standing on the creek bank he had just left. He swears that she was all but rolling on the ground with laughter but he admits that may have been a hypothermic hallucination. To her owner, however, the situation was definitely unfunny because instead of being just cold and tired, he was tired, wet and FREEZING! Getting back to his truck as quickly as possible to turn on the heater was now not just desirable but imperative.

He set off down the creek in the direction of the road leading back to his truck hoping to find either a shallow area or a more stable log to cross the creek. To both his dismay and relief, less than 30 yards downstream, around a slight bend in the creek, was a totally intact, solid footbridge across the creek. Had he moved to the slightly higher ground behind him when he locked on to the log crossing, he would have seen the footbridge and avoided the frigid dunking.

It is not just hunting that creates an it-seemed-like-a good-idea situation. Training can also result in the same state of affairs. An Airedale-owning pal had a very talented dog that, by his own admission, was not performing anywhere near the best of her abilities because he was a lackadaisical trainer. When she refused to enter the water during a hunt test at the Airedale Nationals one year, her owner was summoned to a “captain’s mast” and braced against the bulkhead in front of roughly 120 other Airedale owners at the banquet that evening by the judge who, being a former Navy officer, had considerable experience delivering butt-blisterings to deserving recipients. It was the kind of dressing down where all the “dressee” can do is mutely stand at attention and when it finally ends, say “No excuse sir/ma’am.” Properly chastened and embarrassed as well as knowing that the judge was right, he set about fixing the problem.

On the first day of training with the judge’s admonition that “The dog better have a reliable water entry before I see her again” ringing in his ears knowing this was less than six months away and not wanting to have to endure an encore of the chewing out he received at the banquet, he and the dog headed off for a pond to do some remedial water work. Since it was the first session, it was still fairly early in the spring and the water was not exactly bathtub-warm, it seemed like a good idea to wear chest waders in order to avoid having to take a chilly swim if things went wrong. So, protected, he thought, against that unwelcome contingency, he threw a bumper into the pond and sent the dog. Without any hesitation, the dog hit the water. But the enormous splash generated by her entry caused the dog to become slightly disoriented and she lost the mark. So, having planned for this possibility, her owner waded into the pond to the point where he was waist-deep in the water to assist her by giving her the “vector” to the target.

The dog, seeing the arrival of this convenient high point from which she might locate the missing bumper, immediately took action. Instead of heading off in the direction he was pointing, she climbed up on her owner’s shoulders as he vainly tried to fight her off and was attempting to climb atop his head. Her front paws were on his shoulders but her hind feet were pulling the front bib of his waders down, down, down until they were below the pond’s surface. Icy water cascaded down the front of his waders and making matters worse, there was a 50 pound Airedale perched on his summit. Fortunately, the pond had a long shelf and no steep drop-off or he would have had to hit the “eject” button, also known as the safety clips on his braces (Ed. Note “Braces,” for those of you who have not yet reached your 40th birthday, are suspenders.) holding up his waders. In which case, he would have been even wetter to say nothing of possibly being minus a $150 pair of waders. Finally able to rid himself of his Airedale passenger, he waddled to shore and squished his way back to the truck. The only consolation was that his glorious baptismal as a water trainer had not been in front of an audience of his training buddies. From then on, his water training for the dogs was primarily a land-based operation with the dogs doing the water work.

The grandson of the dog that had given me the putrid water bath in the Republican River continued the family tradition a few years later. Hunting ducks on a marsh necessitated a boat trip to an island around which the duck buzzed like swarms of bees. Calling the dog I ordered him to “Kennel” the command I use to tell my dogs to enter anything–a crate, the house, a boat, the truck. He promptly sat down and everything about him—his posture, the expression on his face—said, “I don’t do boats.”

What do you mean, you don’t do boats. You did boats all summer. In fact, we couldn’t keep you out of the boat. Every time anyone even passed in the vicinity of the boat, you beat them to it and jumped in. “KENNEL!!”

The dog: “I said, I don’t do boats.”

Me: “Of course you do boats. Now. Get. In. There. KENNEL!!!!!!!!!”

The dog: “Not a chance. I don’t do boats.”

Totally exasperated, I picked up all 95 pounds of him and physically put him in the boat. Waiting until I was half in and half out of the boat and in the most vulnerable position possible, he exploded out of the boat going through me like perennial NFL all-pro running back Adrian Peterson hitting a team made up entirely of Pop Warner Peewees. The collision sent me flying into the mud on the edge of the marsh which, in my efforts to scramble back to my feet, liberally coated me from top to bottom. While not as fragrant as the mud along the Republican River, it was gamey enough to require another trip to the truck for a change of clothing all the while making a credible effort to defoliate every bit of flora within a hundred yards with the heat from my language. When I returned to the boat having shed my muddy clothing, my hunting partner said, “How long have you owned this breed?”

“Longer than I care to remember. Since I was fifteen.”

Hunting partner: “Then, could you tell me whatever possessed you to think you could force them to do anything?”

Me: “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time…”

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Posted by Alex on Apr 9 2014. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.