My Life in Dog Years Read Free Page A

I clawed at my pockets for shells, found one, broke open the gun and inserted a shell, slammed it shut and was going to aim again when something about the shape stopped me. (It was well it did—I had accidentally jammed the barrel of the shotgun full of mud when I fell. Had I pulled the trigger the shell would have blown up in my face.)
    There was just enough of the dawn to show a silhouette. Whatever it was remainedat the top of the bank It was sitting there looking down at me and was the wrong shape and size for a bear. It was a big dog, a black dog. But it was a dog and it wasn’t attacking.
    I lowered the gun and wiped the mud out of my eyes, stood and scraped mud off my clothes. I was furious, but not at the dog. There were other hunters who worked the river during duck season and some of them had dogs. I assumed that one of them was nearby and had let his animal run loose, scaring about ten years off my life.
    “Who owns you?” I asked the shape. It didn’t move or make any further sounds and I climbed the bank again and it moved back a few feet, then sat again.
    “Hello!” I called into the woods around me. “I have your dog here!”
    There was nobody
    “So you’re a stray?” There were many stray dogs in town and some of them ran to thewoods. It was bad when they did because they often formed packs and did terrible damage. In packs they were worse than wolves because they did not fear men the way wolves did and they tore livestock and some people to pieces.
    But strays were shy and usually starved. This dog stayed near me and in the gathering light I could see that he was a Labrador and that he was well fed. His coat was thick and he had fat on his back and sides.
    “Well,” I said. “What do I do with you?”
    This time his tail thumped twice and he pointedly looked at the gun, then back at my face, then down the side of the river to the water.
    “You want to hunt?”
    There, he knew that word. His tail hammered his sides and he stood, wiggling, and moved off along the river ahead of me.
    I had never hunted with a dog before anddid not know for certain what was expected of me. But I started to follow, thinking we might jump up a mallard or teal. Then I remembered my fall and the mud and that the gun was still loaded. I unloaded it and checked the bore and found the end packed with mud. It took me a minute to clean it out and reload it and before I’d finished he’d come back and sat four feet away, watching me quietly.
    It was light enough now for me to see that he had a collar and a tag so he wasn’t a stray. It must be some town dog, I thought, that had followed me. I held out my hand. “Come here …”
    But he remained at a distance and when it was obvious that I was ready to go he set off again. It was light enough now to shoot— light enough to see the front bead of the shotgun and a duck against the sky—so I kept the gun ready and we had not gone fifty yardswhen two mallards exploded out of some thick grass near the bank about twenty yards away and started up and across the river.
    It was a classic shot. Mallards flying straight up to gain altitude before making off, backlit against a cold, cloudy October sky. I raised the gun, cocked it, aimed just above the right-hand duck to lead his flight and squeezed the trigger.
    There was a crash and the recoil slammed me back. I was small and the gun was big and I usually had a bruise after firing it more than once. But my aim was good and the right-hand duck seemed to break in the air, crumpled and fell into the water. I had shot ducks over the river before and the way to get them was to wait until the current brought the body to shore. Sometimes it took most of the morning, waiting for the slow-moving water to bring them in.
    This time was different. With the smell of powder still in the air, almost before the duckfinished falling, the dog was off the bank in a great leap, hit the water swimming, his shoulders pumping as he churned the surface