A tribute to Troubles

Out & About, by Howard Delo

I had just graduated from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks and found myself on the other side of the country, attending graduate school in Maine. I was in my early 20s, single, and literally a "stranger in a strange land." My office mate, Carl, an avid duck hunter originally from Missouri, took pity on me and decided I needed a friend.

One mid-June day at the office, Carl asked me to swing by his house on my way home. He said he and Ann, his wife, had something for me. They owned a female black Labrador retriever who'd had a litter of pups about four weeks before and they wanted me to see one of the puppies. I was intrigued with the idea of having my own dog, a new experience for me.

Oh, my dad had owned hunting dogs at different times when I was a kid. One of my daily chores involved feeding and watering the animals, but they were my dad's dogs, not mine. The dogs and I knew who was the boss. This puppy would be a first for me.

That evening, at Carl's house, it was love at first sight. The puppy, Carl and Ann wanted me to see was a runty, little chocolate-brown male, barely able to walk. His ribs were flattened from lying on his stomach. Carl cautioned me that if the ribs didn't straighten out in a week or two, he would need to have the dog "put down." He said the mother had tried to kill the puppy at birth because her instinct told her that he would not survive. Carl and Ann had taken care of the baby for the first few days of his life until the mother would accept him back into the litter. I silently prayed that things would work out.

The next two weeks seemed to drag by as I waited and hoped Carl would tell me to come pick up the puppy. Finally the day arrived when Carl said the puppy's ribs had assumed a more normal shape, the weaning process was complete and that I should come get him. I was thrilled.

When I arrived at Carl and Ann's, the puppy was running and frolicking around the nursery area with the few remaining littermates still present. Carl gave me the necessary registration paperwork and told me to list his color as black, not chocolate, because he would lose the brown puppy coat as he got older. When I asked Carl how much he wanted for the dog, he said to use the money to register the puppy and enjoy my new friend.

I had been thinking about what name to give this new little guy on the AKC registration paperwork. Considering his shaky start in life, I decided that Troubles was perfect.

My life had suddenly and significantly changed. I now had someone else to consider in my daily activities who was totally dependent on me for everything. My carefree days of being "footloose and fancy free" had suddenly assumed more responsibility.

That summer, Troubles and I went through the housebreaking process, which items of my stuff were chewable and which weren't, and all those other early adjustments to our lives with an enthusiasm I think we both enjoyed. To be honest, we each taught the other equally during this period because we were both new to this life-changing experience.

Troubles went everywhere I did, usually sharing my lunch or dinner and taking naps on the truck seat. We had very quickly become, as my wife several years later coined the phrase, "bestest buddies." For instance, after one night of minus 30-degree temperatures and no heat in the cabin that first winter, we both started sleeping together in the same bed for warmth.

Troubles was a natural retriever, so throwing and fetching sticks became a regular pastime. We soon graduated to a hard rubber ball because it went a lot farther than thrown sticks. The longer retrieves often forced him to use his nose to locate the ball in the weeds when he lost sight of how it had bounced and rolled.

Troubles was also scared of the water. Mud puddles were fun to wade in and baths were a torture to be endured, but he shyed away from any bodies of water he couldn't immediately wade or step across. On a late summer trout fishing trip that first year, I decided he needed to learn about swimming. I put the rod down and attached his leash to his collar. I waded out about knee-deep and pulled him in, kicking and screaming.

After Troubles figured out he floated pretty well, his dog-paddle swimming stroke instinctively kicked in and he was off. Then I couldn't get him out of the water. My fishing was done that day, along with the two other guys' I had gone with. Troubles would swim either up or down the stream to visit the guys rather than run along the stream banks, like he had done prior to my "instructions." I thought his antics were amusing, but the other guys … well, let's just say I never got invited back to go fishing.

While Troubles was growing up, one of his favorite games was tug-of-war. I enjoyed the activity as much as he did. Only after we had established a play routine over several months did I learn that tug-of-war was the worst thing you can possibly do in training a retriever. Troubles had developed what is called a "hard mouth" when retrieving. This trait would concern me later on.

I planned to hunt with Troubles and started teaching him basic commands when he got old enough. We moved from the rubber ball to a retrieving dummy and he began getting accustomed to the sound of gunfire. I hate to admit it, but he often learned what I wanted him to do in spite of my methods, not because of my talent as a dog trainer. Even after reading "the" book on training a retriever, I often didn't have a clue what I was doing. I marveled at how smart Troubles really was and how well he seemed to understand what I wanted him to do.

Opening day of the Maine grouse season that first fall found Troubles and me out hunting in the woods behind the small rural cabin we shared 20-plus miles from town. We both saw the sitting grouse about the same time and when the bird flushed, I made one of my better shots that season. After following the flight of the bird and seeing it fold with my shot, Troubles made a "by-the-book" retrieve on the first game bird he had ever seen. Little did I suspect that this humble start would mark the beginning of a lifetime of cherished hunting memories I have about Troubles.

Over the course of our time in Maine, Troubles and I hunted many grouse and woodcock together. On several occasions after I assumed I had missed the shot, Troubles would appear from some dense brush with the bird in his mouth, dutifully retrieving to his master.

After we moved to Georgia, we still continued to hunt grouse and woodcock in the mountainous, north Georgia woods. On one hunt in a dense thicket, Troubles found, "pointed," flushed and caught a large woodcock in flight. I observed the whole scenario, fascinated by his concentration on the bird. Troubles never really liked the "taste" of woodcock in his mouth, so after catching this bird, he put it on the ground and looked at me as if to say, "Okay, I found it, I caught it, you come pick it up." I did.

On a couple of dove hunting trips to south Georgia, Troubles watched the shooting action from the shade beneath my truck. After having him smell a dead bird so he knew what to retrieve, he seemed to beeline straight to the doves we hadn't found. After one hunt, he located the last three birds in a matter of seconds where my brother and I had been looking for probably 15 minutes.

It wasn't until we returned to Alaska, though, that Troubles discovered his true passion in life -- retrieving ducks.

On one hunt with a friend in Tutka Bay, across from Homer, the seas were running about three feet with "white-capping" waves and the winds were howling. Bill wanted a drake Harlequin to mount for his collection and had spotted a couple off in the surf several hundred yards down the beach. He took off at a near run to get within range and Troubles went with him. I was adjusting my hip boot straps and fell hopelessly behind. Bill got in position, the birds flushed off the water and he downed them both with a single shot each.

Troubles saw both ducks fall and immediately went after the first bird. The waves were breaking over his head as he swam to his first retrieve. He brought the bird back to Bill and immediately went back out after the second. By then, Troubles had lost sight of the duck. Bill was giving him hand signals, directing him toward the bird's location. Troubles found the floating duck and retrieved it to Bill. I watched all this while still trying to catch up to their location. Because of Troubles' hard mouth retrieves, I feared he might have ruined the birds for mounting.

Two things surprised me. First, I had never consciously used hand signals while training Troubles. I didn't know how. Bill commented to me later that Troubles reacted like he had been raised using hand signals. Second, both Bill and I knew Troubles had a hard mouth and I figured he had probably ruined the birds. Bill told me that when Troubles delivered the ducks to his hand, there wasn't a feather out of place. I guess Troubles just sensed that he needed to be gentle with these particular birds.

As the years went by, Troubles and I hunted ducks wherever I happened to be working around Alaska. In time, he had to learn to share me with a new wife, something he was unhappy about at first. He also spent more and more of his time sleeping and taking life easy. However, with the arrival of fall and duck hunting time, Troubles would literally be bouncing like a rubber ball, ready to go after some ducks, if he saw me put on a certain coat and pick up my shotgun.

His last retrieve was a lucky triple I had made with a single passing shot on three Harlequins, a drake and two hens. That happened during the last hunt we made for the 1985 season. Troubles died on March 9, 1986. He was just shy of his 13th birthday. I cried that day.

We buried him on the hill behind our house at Kitoi Bay on Afognak Island, where he could look out over the bay and see the ducks as they went about their daily routines.

I've owned one other black Lab since Troubles and will probably have one or two more in the future, but he will always be my first and best special friend who enriched my life more than I can begin to describe.

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist living in Big Lake. Send your comments and ideas to editor@frontiersman.com, or call (907) 352-2268 and leave a message for Howard.