Dogs are masters of interpersonal communication with humans. It seems those communication skills are what makes a dog a dog in the first place, rather than a wolf. Dogs read us, interpret our often bizarre behavior, and react accordingly.
They usually get us right.
It’s a remarkable business, this interspecies chatter. Based on the conclusions certain members of my own species — but not gender — have made about my communication skills, I sometimes wonder if I’m better off just talking to dogs.
That said, my bird dog Doll and I have been having something of a communication breakdown recently. Doll is a pointing dog, but she’s gotten rather casual about hunting. By that I mean she’s not particularly intense about the whole pointing business. Most pointing dogs, my first English setter Jack for instance, are electric on point. Once they get scent on a bird, they freeze, nose pointed in the direction of their prey, and they can’t be budged.
A buddy of mine once said of his German short-haired pointers that he imagined sparks flying off their backs when they were on point.
Doll points, and occasionally it’s of that ridged, static-electricity type my friend described. But often I only know she’s on point because she’s standing still. Just standing there.
Last week it got even worse. She was working about 50 yards off, and I could see she’d stopped. But as she stood there, she was looking around as if she couldn’t get over the way the fading sunlight glinted off the granite abutment to her right. As I started walking toward her, she even glanced over her shoulder a couple times, to see if I was coming.
And here the communication breakdown began. It’s not unusual for a dog to go on point when there are no birds in front of them. Usually the dog is just misreading old scent, and their lack of intensity is the giveaway. A dog that’s fidgeting on point is a dog that knows it’s been had, and is eager to be released so it can get back after those troublesome birds.
What I thought Doll was saying to me went something like this: “I think there might have been birds here recently, but I’m not sure. So, just to be on the safe side, I went on point.”
That’s what I thought I heard, anyway. So I took my time closing the distance. Despite her fidgets, however, she never budged. So fortunately I got my gun ready as I approached.
The covey that exploded in front of her might have been 20 birds, and they couldn’t have been more than 15 feet away. Startled, I hurried the first shot and missed. But a smaller group flushed a moment later and flew in the opposite direction. That was enough time to gather myself and drop a bird with my second shot.
There are things I can do to help steady Doll on point, but she’s 7 years old, and after a fabulous season last year I was hoping I had a finished dog. Jack was finished at 2, which was perfect for me because there are few things I enjoy less than training. For me, bird-dog training is really just going hunting with a young dog, and being patient as they work out the kinks.
Still, what remains clear is that when Doll is working into the wind, pay her proper respects. We were walking to the truck with the wind at our back the other day and she kept peeling off to the left, heading back upwind. Each time I stopped and followed.
Eventually the backtracking paid off and we were rewarded with a fabulous covey rise. The point was pretty danged good too.
The shooting? Well, sometimes even nothing can be a real cool hand if your dog just reminded you of the power of her nose.