Motherhood (Sort Of)

Mulak Reader - Motherhood (Sort of)

Even non-dog people like this story. Sports Afield used it as their “Backcountry” feature in the December 1988 issue, where it generated as many fan letters as any story I’ve ever written. I later used it almost verbatim in one of the chapters of Pointing Dogs.

MOTHERHOOD (SORT OF)

          In the cellar the short, yelping cries seemed to die away, but then they began again a moment later. The puppy had been wining incessantly for the past half-hour. Susan shifted irritably in her chair, then folded her cribbage hand in exasperation. "That whimpering is driving me crazy."
          "Bad cards, huh?" I tried not to smile.
          "It's not bothering you?"
          I shrugged.
          After a moment, Susan glanced at her cards again, but in the background the yowling took on a new, higher pitch. She closed her eyes. "Isn't there something you can do to keep that little dog quiet?"
          The answer, of course, was no, especially since I held a triple run of three and had slipped a pair of jacks into the crib, but I got up and went into the cellar anyway.
          In her temporary pen, puppy Zelda ran to the wire screen and jumped with glee at the sight of me. She would have done the same if it had been the son of Frankenstein that came down the stairs: This was her first night away from her litter mates, and she had a bad case of the lonlies. There was an alarm clock ticking beneath a hot water bottle in her nest box—Tips from Tap that may have worked for him, but tonight Zelda wasn't having any truck with them: She was alone, and she knew it. I sat on the stairs and watched as the pup alternately stood on her hind legs and franticly clawed at the wire in my direction, then retreated and sat on the newspapers, crying all the while.
          Outside, a late-January snowstorm whistled under the eves. There are times when I can feel very much a prisoner in my own house, too. I leaned into Zelda's pen and picked her up—five pounds of instantly happy English setter. I sat with her for a moment. When she attacked my fingers with puppy-sharp teeth, I squeezed her muzzle and told her "No!" and put her back in the little enclosure. She immediately went back into her wining mode.
          On the other side of the cellar my old Brittany slept on. Deaf as a stone, she hadn't even heard me come down the stairs. In years past Winnie had been my number-one bird dog, but her last season was behind her. In a moment of inspiration I went to her and carried her into Zelda's pen. She wasn't happy about it all, but what the hell, I told myself, the puppy's wining isn't going to bother her—she's deaf anyway. And maybe things will work out.
          I watched the two dogs long enough to be sure Winnie wasn't going to snap at the puppy, but I knew she wouldn't—My old Brit was to gentle what Babe Ruth was to home run. Zelda nipped at Winnie's legs a few times in a "play with me" invitation, but Winnie stoical ignored her and laid down in the nest box. The puppy nuzzled Winnie's belly, vainly searching for a teat the old spayed Brittany didn't have, then, after another try at the "let's play" routine, she curled up next to Winnie.
          When I returned to the fireplace and the cribbage game, Susan was listening to the silence. She was smiling. "What'd you do?"
          "I took my cards with me. I knew you'd look at my hand."
          "No, I mean with the puppy—She's quiet."
          "I put Winnie in the pen with her. Motherhood wins again."
          Susan looked at me to be sure I wasn't joking, then announced, "I've got to see this."
          We crept down the cellar stairs together and peeked around the corner. Winnie peered out at us, puzzled and somewhat resigned, certain she was being punished once more for something she didn't understand. Eight months later both Winnie and the puppy who now slept against her furry warmth would be dead—one by euthanasia, the other a victim of a passing car—but tonight Winnie was not-quite-voluntarily acting out the last useful task of a life that had, since its beginning, had me at its center. I tried, but no matter how much I read into her expression that evening or any of the other nights for the next month when she slept in the puppy's pen, I never saw anything that resembled maternal contentment.
          I smiled back at Winnie's sad eyes.

          Someone who was not a friend once told me that you ruin your first few bird dogs, then for the rest of your life you never again have a dog as good as those first ones. I still don't like that guy, and it irks me to think he was close to being right. Most of what I learned in training Winnie had to do with how not to handle a sensitive bird dog: Her predecessor had possessed an intensity that seemed to supercharge everything he had ever done, so, of course, I always compared gentle Winnie unfavorably to him and managed to overlook her positive traits—She was the one absolute best retriever of crippled birds I've ever seen anywhere, and although her motor always seemed in need of hotter spark plugs, it was that very non-hysterical quality that made her so deadly on woodcock.
          That was Winnie, the dog about whom I've written so much and who has left a scar on my heart that still hasn't completely healed, even now. On the stairs that snowy evening, I faced again the question that every hunter who picks out a puppy from a litter has to ponder sooner or later: What do you do with a washed-up bird dog, one who can't hunt any longer, one who old age has gotten in a strangle hold, one who has no future? Whatever decision you arrive at, none are easy—not even the decision to make no decision: Old dogs just don't fade away, after all, no matter how you might wish it were otherwise. Farmers, at least the ones I know, make it a point not to give names to their animals, knowing what they do about beef prices and pork futures. Pets can become hazardous to your emotional health, especially at parting time. And an old bird dog can tear your heart out.
          Although I'm a sucker for dog stories, I don't like the gimmick of personifying dogs: The only time, it seems, that dogs are noteworthy is when they act like humans, so it follows that Lassie and Rin Tin Tin fostered a generation of imitators that seem to be honest, sincere people trapped inside a dog's body. Too bad. I like dogs because they're not people. Sure, I know they can express human traits at times, and maybe Lassie earned her keep by rescuing Timmy a few times each month, but me, I want my dogs to bark when someone rings the doorbell. Give me dog dogs that like to dig holes and fetch things and roll in cow flops. And, forgive me this one vanity, I want them to behave like dogs and go berserk when I put on my hunting clothes.
          And Winnie, for whatever else she might or might not have been, was at least a dog dog.
          Four years later, even from this distance, it still seems like the sort of thing that belongs in someone else's story: In the last months of her life, Winnie permitted us to sleep nights by being, if not exactly a mother, at least a mommy to Zelda. In return, I indulged in one of Winnie's lifelong fantasies.
          I took her rabbit hunting.
          It was another "What the hell..." decision—She had been pointing rabbits all her life, anyway. Bird dogs, of course, are supposed to ignore furry game. Winnie had never completely agreed with that edict, and her easy-going hunting style had been such that whenever I saw her break into a run, it was safe to assume she had started a bunny. I would holler at her, and she would come slinking back, looking guilty, but never quite so remorseful that she could resist the temptation to pretend that she was a beagle when next she smelled the redolence of hasenpfeffer on the hoof.
          Rabbit season ran through the end of February. She could only last for an hour or so, but we went out nearly every day that the weather permitted. She'd yelp softly, almost to herself, when a rabbit would run from one of her points, and her aging legs would sprint again, if only for a dozen steps.
          It was a good year for rabbits, if not for bird dogs.
          Near the end, she even stopped looking guilty.

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This site was last updated 09/21/06