Call of the Mild by Lily Raff McCaulou

Author:Lily Raff McCaulou [MCCAULOU, LILY RAFF]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Nature / General, Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs
ISBN: 9781455510641
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2012-06-12T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

GOOD DOG, BAD WOLF

The same fall that Betsy takes us mushroom hunting, I continue to get out and hunt for birds. Of all the things I enjoy about hunting, my favorite is watching the dogs. I jump at any invitation to join an expedition that includes a trained dog. These animals are incredible, first because of their physical abilities: to sniff out a bird and then startle it and hold it still. Next, they astound me with how well they work with humans. They read their owners’ body language and anticipate their slightest movements. I notice their happiness in the field, their satisfaction while retrieving a bird their owner has shot. This makes me rethink my relationship with my own pet dog.

I adopted Sylvia three years ago in April. Like so many modern-day love affairs, ours began online. After browsing Petfinder.com for months, I stumbled across a profile for Missy, a one-year-old female who had been picked up as a stray and was thought to be a flat-coated retriever mix. I’d read that the breed was well mannered, playful and large enough to go running or skiing, but not as unruly as the hundred-pound Great Pyrenees whom Scott already owned when we met. One Saturday, we drove Scott’s dog, Bob, out to meet this mystery gal, and the two ignored each other completely. Even when we took the pooch home with us, and she and Bob rode together in the back of Scott’s car, they avoided all eye contact. The next morning, they finally acknowledged each other by playing wildly in our backyard.

Back then, I’d had no real interest in hunting. But in hindsight, if I had thought to expose her to birds right away, Sylvia probably could have become a fine hunting dog. Instead, we raised her with little access to non-human or canine animals—with one notable exception: fish.

Scott and I started taking Sylvia on fishing trips immediately after we rescued her. She was good company and, unlike Bob, she stayed close enough and obeyed commands well enough that she rarely caused trouble. I can’t imagine exactly what was going through Sylvia’s diminutive head the first time she watched Scott hook a fish, but I know that it was a life-changing event. We were standing on the bank of the Williamson River, next to a deep pool of crystal-clear water. The fish chomped Scott’s fly and leapt into the air. And Sylvia lost her head. She surged into the current, swimming in circles where the fish had breached a few moments earlier. Periodically, she plunged her entire head underwater to glimpse the fish. Sylvia’s ancestors may have been bred to find and retrieve birds, but from that moment on, Sylvia has seemed perfectly happy dedicating her life to fish.

She knows more about fly-fishing than most humans do. When fish are rising to feed off the surface of the water, she often notices before I do. If I’m fishing with a dry fly—an imitation of a floating bug such as a mayfly—she stands aquiver and stares as it drifts downstream.

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