Doug Rose is a writer and flyfishing guide as well as an old friend. When I share his work with others, I generally introduce him as a mix of Brautigan and Hemingway, but I also think of his direct way of writing as if it came from pages of those first Field and Stream articles I read as a teenager. I couldn't wait for the next issue just as I look forward to anything Doug puts down on paper.............Here is his first, and I hope not last, contribution to our Best Dog story lineup: Red Dog in the Snow, written in the past couple of days out in Forks, Washington where Doug can put you on to cutthroat, steelhead, and perch in the surf.........Read more of his work and book a fishing trip at his Doug Rose Olympic Peninsula Flyfishing website and by all means, pick up a copy of his Flyfishing Guide to the Olympic Peninsula..........
A RED DOG IN THE SNOW.
By Doug Rose
I am absolutely certain that the best decision I ever made in my life was to move to the Pacific Northwest. I love the ocean here, and the mountains and Roosevelt elk and rain forest and the glacial rivers. Most of all, I love the beaches, with their clams and crabs and eelgrass and oysters and cutthroat trout. But, after nearly thirty years on the Olympic Peninsula, there are still things I miss about Michigan, where I grew up. The two that I daydream about the most are pheasants and snow. And my most vivid memories of Michigan contain both pheasants and snow, as well as an Irish setter named Cindy.
We had a succession of mutts before we got Cindy. This was back in the early 1960s, right after the movie Big Red. It was about a lanky, elegant Irish setter. My father hunted pheasants in the fields and corn and swamp behind our house before the movie. But pheasants are cunning and prefer to run rather than fly if you don't have a dog. Hunting was tough. I think the movie was the stimulus that my dad needed to actually get a bird dog. He liked the way the Irish setter looked in the movie. Not long after that, he brought a fat red puppy home.
Our Cindy wasn't as tall or lanky or glamorous as the dog in the movie. But she was beautiful--an autumnal red, with the long "feathers" on her legs and tail, and a little blush of white on her chest. Her eyes were brown and her head had a little dome. Contrary to the conventional wisdom about Irish setters, she wasn't particularly high strung or headstrong. I think a lot of the degradation of setters was a result of the movie, when people wanted the larger classier looking dogs. Cindy was a country-bred dog, from hunting stock.
There were a lot of pheasants around our place in those days, and as soon as Cindy was old enough to hunt, our success rate went way up. No one knew anything about shock collars back then, and the training she got was perfunctory. She simply knew, somehow, that pheasants were what we wanted her to pursue, and she went about it diligently. She quartered through the corn stubble, she pushed through the burdocks and cattails, and she nosed through the tussocks and brush. We always knew when she was close to a bird because not only her tail wagged back and forth (that was the first clue that she was on a pheasant), but her entire hind end.
I know that there wasn't always snow on the ground during pheasant season back then, but nearly all of my memories of us hunting have snow in them. Even as a self-absorbed, not-particularly bright, pre-teen, I was aware of how beautiful the sight was of Cindy, in her mahogany coat, moving quickly but purposefully over the snow. I can close my eyes anytime, anywhere and instantly see that image.
My most vivid memories of all are of when the snow was coming down hardest, in the near blizzards, when it was like a veil between us and Cindy. On those days, she was the only bright color against the pewter sky and faded corn stalks and snow. That is until a pheasant, as garish as anything imaginable in southern Michigan in winter, exploded from a tunnel of brush. And then there was the hollow boom of a shotgun. Then the pungent, familiar scent of burnt gunpowder, hanging in cold air.
Good bird dogs are smart. They know how to do a lot of things naturally, right out of the box, and the best, intrepid dogs like Cindy, learn and absord new things each year. By the time she was four or five, she knew birds, and she knew the fields and swamps and thickets near our house.
One time we were hunting the edge of our neighbor's cornfield. It had been harvested a couple of months earlier,and the stalks stuck up out of shin-deep snow. We were working the hedgerow between the corn and a marshy pasture. Cindy got hot and trailed the pheasant down toward a narrow triangle where the pasture and corn ended. There was a bare patch of land beyond the cornfield, and then a wetland, with snow-covered cattails, and a frozen-over pond.
Cindy knew or sensed--whatever word you want to call it--that the pheasant would not want to run across the open ground. She moved quickly, pushing it hard. Suddenly she stopped. Moments later, a large rooster burst from the corn, cackling. My dad knocked it down in one shot.
As I said, I don't have any trouble at all calling up that memory. I can see Cindy, red against the snow, and the corn stubble, and the russets and tans of the cattails, and the frozen pond, and the hill sloping above it to the stand of dark bare winter trees.
Cindy wasn't just our bird dog, of course. She followed my brother, Scott, and me pretty much everywhere we went. Over to the Rearing Ponds to fish for trout or bass or to swim. Back behind the United Brethren campground to the big swamp. She went out with me on dark winter mornings before school when I checked my trapline. She was with me the day I got my first muskrat, and I had to hold it above my shoulders all the way home because she wanted to get hold of it.
Unlike most bird dogs today, Cindy also had something of a life of her own. A few times a year she would disappear for a day or two. This was a long time ago and people in the country let their dogs wander more than they do today. We worried about her but she always came back, often with a pheasant or other creature that she'd managed to catch by herself. Her feathers were usually matted with burrs.
I have talked a lot about the things Cindy did, but not much about her as a creature, with feelings and ideas of her own and funny quirks. Well, she was quiet and sweet and loved all of us, maybe my dad best of all, because she knew he was boss. She wasn't supposed to go in the living room, but just about every time we left her in the house alone, she would sneak into it and lay on the couch. When we came home, and she heard our car in the driveway, she would raise her head up above the couch and look out the living room window. It was sort of a family joke. She liked ice cream.
Like all of the best dogs I have had--the second Cindy, Leo, Darcy, Lily and now Ruby--she was brave and decent and optimistic.
In the sporting literature, we are always told that we learn how to conduct ourselves from our fathers and other older mentors. And that is certainly true. My father was a wonderful role model as an outdoorsman, one that has stood me in good stead for a half-century now.
But having spent all these years around bird dogs, I have also come to realize that a boy or girl who spends a lot of time around a good dog has an additional, different kind of teacher. I have thought about this a lot in recent years. I am absolutely positive that the dogs that I have owned and loved have had as much a role in shaping me as anyone or anything in my life.
That was certainly true of Cindy, my red dog in the snow.
A RED DOG IN THE SNOW.
By Doug Rose
I am absolutely certain that the best decision I ever made in my life was to move to the Pacific Northwest. I love the ocean here, and the mountains and Roosevelt elk and rain forest and the glacial rivers. Most of all, I love the beaches, with their clams and crabs and eelgrass and oysters and cutthroat trout. But, after nearly thirty years on the Olympic Peninsula, there are still things I miss about Michigan, where I grew up. The two that I daydream about the most are pheasants and snow. And my most vivid memories of Michigan contain both pheasants and snow, as well as an Irish setter named Cindy.
We had a succession of mutts before we got Cindy. This was back in the early 1960s, right after the movie Big Red. It was about a lanky, elegant Irish setter. My father hunted pheasants in the fields and corn and swamp behind our house before the movie. But pheasants are cunning and prefer to run rather than fly if you don't have a dog. Hunting was tough. I think the movie was the stimulus that my dad needed to actually get a bird dog. He liked the way the Irish setter looked in the movie. Not long after that, he brought a fat red puppy home.
Our Cindy wasn't as tall or lanky or glamorous as the dog in the movie. But she was beautiful--an autumnal red, with the long "feathers" on her legs and tail, and a little blush of white on her chest. Her eyes were brown and her head had a little dome. Contrary to the conventional wisdom about Irish setters, she wasn't particularly high strung or headstrong. I think a lot of the degradation of setters was a result of the movie, when people wanted the larger classier looking dogs. Cindy was a country-bred dog, from hunting stock.
There were a lot of pheasants around our place in those days, and as soon as Cindy was old enough to hunt, our success rate went way up. No one knew anything about shock collars back then, and the training she got was perfunctory. She simply knew, somehow, that pheasants were what we wanted her to pursue, and she went about it diligently. She quartered through the corn stubble, she pushed through the burdocks and cattails, and she nosed through the tussocks and brush. We always knew when she was close to a bird because not only her tail wagged back and forth (that was the first clue that she was on a pheasant), but her entire hind end.
I know that there wasn't always snow on the ground during pheasant season back then, but nearly all of my memories of us hunting have snow in them. Even as a self-absorbed, not-particularly bright, pre-teen, I was aware of how beautiful the sight was of Cindy, in her mahogany coat, moving quickly but purposefully over the snow. I can close my eyes anytime, anywhere and instantly see that image.
My most vivid memories of all are of when the snow was coming down hardest, in the near blizzards, when it was like a veil between us and Cindy. On those days, she was the only bright color against the pewter sky and faded corn stalks and snow. That is until a pheasant, as garish as anything imaginable in southern Michigan in winter, exploded from a tunnel of brush. And then there was the hollow boom of a shotgun. Then the pungent, familiar scent of burnt gunpowder, hanging in cold air.
Good bird dogs are smart. They know how to do a lot of things naturally, right out of the box, and the best, intrepid dogs like Cindy, learn and absord new things each year. By the time she was four or five, she knew birds, and she knew the fields and swamps and thickets near our house.
One time we were hunting the edge of our neighbor's cornfield. It had been harvested a couple of months earlier,and the stalks stuck up out of shin-deep snow. We were working the hedgerow between the corn and a marshy pasture. Cindy got hot and trailed the pheasant down toward a narrow triangle where the pasture and corn ended. There was a bare patch of land beyond the cornfield, and then a wetland, with snow-covered cattails, and a frozen-over pond.
Cindy knew or sensed--whatever word you want to call it--that the pheasant would not want to run across the open ground. She moved quickly, pushing it hard. Suddenly she stopped. Moments later, a large rooster burst from the corn, cackling. My dad knocked it down in one shot.
As I said, I don't have any trouble at all calling up that memory. I can see Cindy, red against the snow, and the corn stubble, and the russets and tans of the cattails, and the frozen pond, and the hill sloping above it to the stand of dark bare winter trees.
Cindy wasn't just our bird dog, of course. She followed my brother, Scott, and me pretty much everywhere we went. Over to the Rearing Ponds to fish for trout or bass or to swim. Back behind the United Brethren campground to the big swamp. She went out with me on dark winter mornings before school when I checked my trapline. She was with me the day I got my first muskrat, and I had to hold it above my shoulders all the way home because she wanted to get hold of it.
Unlike most bird dogs today, Cindy also had something of a life of her own. A few times a year she would disappear for a day or two. This was a long time ago and people in the country let their dogs wander more than they do today. We worried about her but she always came back, often with a pheasant or other creature that she'd managed to catch by herself. Her feathers were usually matted with burrs.
I have talked a lot about the things Cindy did, but not much about her as a creature, with feelings and ideas of her own and funny quirks. Well, she was quiet and sweet and loved all of us, maybe my dad best of all, because she knew he was boss. She wasn't supposed to go in the living room, but just about every time we left her in the house alone, she would sneak into it and lay on the couch. When we came home, and she heard our car in the driveway, she would raise her head up above the couch and look out the living room window. It was sort of a family joke. She liked ice cream.
Like all of the best dogs I have had--the second Cindy, Leo, Darcy, Lily and now Ruby--she was brave and decent and optimistic.
In the sporting literature, we are always told that we learn how to conduct ourselves from our fathers and other older mentors. And that is certainly true. My father was a wonderful role model as an outdoorsman, one that has stood me in good stead for a half-century now.
But having spent all these years around bird dogs, I have also come to realize that a boy or girl who spends a lot of time around a good dog has an additional, different kind of teacher. I have thought about this a lot in recent years. I am absolutely positive that the dogs that I have owned and loved have had as much a role in shaping me as anyone or anything in my life.
That was certainly true of Cindy, my red dog in the snow.
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