Companionship with a dog is a pleasure to experience, but a true partnership with a gundog causes the unfathomable depths of my person to call out to and plumb the immeasurable universe of another living thing. Deep calls out to deep, and when I listen intuitively with all of my cells to the mysterious thing that exists within us all, sometimes I get lucky and the deep answers the deep.
On the first day of his fifteenth hunting season, Farley died in his sleep. Farley was our first gundog, and when we brought him into our lives, I was ignorant as to how his life bound to my own would take me deeper into the landscapes I call home and deeper into the hearts and minds of all working dogs.
If you want to understand the magnificence of dogs as a unique species, hunt behind one. I once heard someone say that the most disrespectful thing you can do to a dog is treat them like a human, and now I know those words to be true. In hindsight, I should have kicked off Farley’s arrival with a heartfelt vow, earnest words spoken aloud for his ears and my own, something to capture the seriousness of the commitment I was taking on, but I didn’t realize where this dog would lead my husband and me as individuals and as a family. A commitment to a gundog is as serious as a marriage commitment except, thank goodness, hunting collars are less expensive than gold rings. Who of us is worthy of a good
