The final hunt of the season went about as well as most of the others.
I followed the dog with optimism, punching through sagebrush and cattails and willows, thinking there would eventually be a bird somewhere in the scablands that felt like flying within shooting range.
Several hours later, we returned home tired, cold and empty-handed.
Just like that, Wrigley’s rookie year was over.
His stats across several grouse and pheasant hunts this fall are underwhelming. A few pheasants were flushed, and he has a perfect record on retrieves — one for one.
That’s not much to brag about. But I couldn’t be happier with this goofy little yellow Lab.
My wife and I brought Wrigley home from the shelter about a year ago. He was 7 months old, and every dog owner knows what that means. The same cute little fur baby who was afraid to go down the stairs was also a maniac who turned his water bowl into a hockey puck, cardboard boxes into confetti and cat poop into food.
I began to wonder if he’d ever turn into a bird dog.
There were flashes of potential. He loved chasing balls and dummies. He didn’t disappear when off leash. When I showed him his first pheasant wing, he went nuts. (Yes, he destroyed the wing.)
I’d never trained a dog before, so I reached out to friends who knew more than I did. They gave me some hope. One friend who has turned two mixed-breed dogs into solid pheasant hunters said it’s possible to teach a dog anything, but it takes work.
Former Spokesman-Review Outdoors Editor Rich Landers gave me a copy of “The 10-Minute Retriever,” which schooled me on the basics and burned into my brain what seems to be the most agreed-upon tenet in dog training: All it really takes is 10 minutes a day.
I had a few basic goals, the most important of which was making sure he wouldn’t disappear when we went into the field. I also wanted him to retrieve birds without eating them, and I didn’t want him to be gun shy.
We force fetched, worked on recall and had a few gunfire sessions. He really enjoyed finding the dummies wrapped in pheasant pelts for me. I really enjoyed watching him run.
All the work paid some dividends. He was listening better both at home and in the field. He even eased up on his shoe and turd addictions, though he couldn’t go cold turkey. By August, I was beginning to think this might all work.
The one milestone I missed was introducing him to live birds before hunting season. That’s what good trainers do. Bad trainers settle for on-the-job training, and they get the results they deserve.
On our first grouse hunt, I could tell he didn’t quite know what we were doing. After walking a mile or so, there were a half-dozen grouse standing in plain sight on the old logging road, about 25 yards away.
Wrigley didn’t react until we were practically on top of them, and the birds were kind enough to wait to fly until I was ready to shoot. I winged one and it fell in some thick timber uphill from us.
When I started toward it, Wrigley bolted out in front of me and started sniffing. He found it and brought it to me. That part of the training had worked.
That was the high point of the season, along with his first pheasant flush and my mastery of the delicate art of giving him a drink from a water bottle.
My poor shooting meant he didn’t get anymore chances to retrieve, though I’m still convinced I pelted one rooster with some size 6 shot before it ran off. I’ll need some practice before next season.
Wrigley will need some more work, too, but overall he did his job. He ranged close, sniffed things, splashed in creeks and rolled in dead stuff. At some point on each hunt, I’d stop walking and just watch him be a dog. There’s nothing better.
There were still a few days left to hunt chukars, but we let those high-country devil birds be. Instead, after our morning fetch routine, I’ll be hunched over a fly-tying vise and Wrigley will be sprawled on his bed nearby, resting up. It was a good season.
