Tribute to a Duck Dog

A fellow member and outdoorsman on the Virginia Hunting Forum recently lost his best friend. He shared his memories with us, and being the family that we are, it seems that the entire forum cried with him. We wanted to share his tribute to his pal Dutch because it truly measures just how much we hunters adore our dogs and strive for that connection that is inevitable when it comes to our four-legged partners at home and in the field. Thank you for sharing with us, Andy. Our hearts are heavy and breaking for your loss. Many a tear has been shed on keyboards across the state today...

A Tribute to Dutch

SEPTEMBER of 2014 wasn't like the Septembers previous. I was hired on as a professional fire fighter in August with the City of Hampton and the fire academy kept me away from home and the birds five full days a week. So for a change I was a true weekend warrior (but I finally have a real job and the ability to support my family, now a wife and two boys strong). Like many things, the academy will pass and I will have more than enough time for other pursuits outside of my very important career, combined with enough financial free-board to actually do it. For all that, I am more than willing to give up a season.

We got to dove hunt like usual, just not the five and six days a week usual. It was hot those first two Saturdays and my red dog was no longer a puppy at the age of 8, but you wouldn't have known it. Dutch actually got better and better every fall. His temperament and behavior in the blind and on the hunt was absolutely perfect. A model citizen. I wish I could have kept him exactly as he was this past September forever. I would have never wanted for another animal in my life.

By the time late October rolled around, we started to notice something wasn't quite right with Dutch. He wasn't eating like normal. Ever since he was a puppy he would chomp down his food so fast he would make himself sick. We had to buy special bowls to slow his consumption down. Now, we were trying to bribe him with gravy and trimmings just to make him eat. His bowel movements got irregular. At first, we didn't think anything of it. Probably just too much venison trimmings from a deer I shot during archery season... he would be fine in a week. He improved a bit and we stopped worrying. He had lost some weight, which didn't seem like a bad thing. He went to the vet for his rabies shot and the vet didn't seem concerned at all with it.

By Thanksgiving, we knew it was something more serious. Dutch appeared to be going blind. He had no energy to retrieve any longer, despite still having the desire. He was running into things. He was having trouble getting up and stairs were almost an impossible chore. I entertained the thought of hunting him over the Thanksgiving holiday on an easy walk in hunt, but while his ears went up at the word ‘Birds’, his body wouldn't let him do it… and neither would my wife. He was up at 3am to see me off, but wasn't even whining and throwing a fit like the times I left with my coat and a gun case all the years passed. He simply sighed, and seemed to accept that he had seen his day. It nearly broke my heart.

Dutch had a form of epilepsy which gave him occasional seizures when he was younger. He had been on a highly toxic drug called Phenobarbital to control those seizures. We took him off of it cautiously a few years ago, and he hadn't had any episodes since (that we knew of), but we thought it might be a reaction to the rabies shot, since it was a round of vaccines that triggered the disorder to begin with. Phenobarb is very hard on the liver, and while he wasn't showing any symptoms of liver or kidney failure or distress we didn't rule that possibility out. We also feared it could be a tumor or worse, cancer.

It came to head the next week. He stopped eating altogether. He started leaking stool and we knew it was something very serious. Unable to take a day off work due to the academy schedule (you miss a training day at this point you fail, you fail and you get fired), I got Kristi to take him to the vet on the morning of December 5, 2014. I snuck back to my vehicle to check my phone during a break in the day and called her and it was just as we feared. Cancer. It was aggressive and in his bone marrow. The vet was surprised he was still alive at all and said two weeks tops if we were lucky. Lucky?

The selfish side of me (historically the dominant side) wanted to keep him alive and hope it would just go away. But the adult side that had finally set in over the course of this wonderful dog’s life knew what I had to do. I couldn't let that wonderful dog suffer, and I refused to let him die without me by his side. Only having weekends we set ‘the appointment’ for the next morning at 11:30. My brothers at the fire station instantly knew something was wrong, maybe my eyes were puffy, maybe it was my posture or that I was oddly quiet. I brushed it off while my heart broke inside. I rode home with tears in my eyes.

Dutch was curled up in the laundry room by the back entrance door where he usually was, waiting for me to get home like always. I tried not to make a big deal of it when I came home. I stopped and petted him like I have ten thousand times before and let him in the house.

We laid out some old linen on the living room floor and picked up some plain cheeseburgers in hope he might have a nice comfortable evening. He didn't feel up to eating, and unable to stand up any longer I knew he might not make it through the night. Deep down, I prayed that he wouldn't… I didn't think I could handle carrying him into the vet’s office the next day… dreading every second of the morning that passed… waiting for the inevitable. Everybody deserves to die at home with their family, especially this dog. And it still hadn't hit me yet.

I pulled out some old duck hunting DVDs that kept my going through my incarceration in military school and the long hot off-season. Dutch and I used to watch them several times a week… he chewing a bone or us playing mini-fetch with his half-gutted plush duck toy in the living room.

I smiled thinking about that little tiny mallard duck with his squeaker ripped out by puppy teeth, and that one simple memory opened a flood gate of times spend with that dog I hadn't relived in a long time.

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I WAS 22 years old; a dangerous age. Fresh out of college at The Citadel and working in a local high-end firearms shop catering to the well heeled sportsmen that passed through the low country of South Carolina. My mind was full of dreams about being the next Will Primos and working in the hunting industry. Being on TV, paid to travel and hunt. Maybe going to Africa and becoming that rare American PH. I had a lifetime of opportunity ahead of me, and absolutely zero clue about the real world, how it works or how to get where I wanted to go

It was November of 2005; I met a gentleman named David Solana from Savannah, Georgia. He was looking for a 20 gauge Browning Superposed to match the 12 gauge his father has left him. Oddly enough within a few hours of phone calls and internet searching, I found him one within his budget and made the arrangements for the sale. We got to talking back and forth and I made mention that I was starting to look for a retriever of my own now that I was out of school, and was considering either a Boykin or a Golden.

David smiled and said “Hey, no kidding! Our two Goldens are going to have a litter right around Christmas. I’d love for you to have one!”

He emailed me pictures and credentials and offered me a price that was just ridiculously low and I went ahead and wrote him a check.

His two goldens, Dixie and Cotton, whelped a litter of 13 (7 females and 6 males) on Dec. 31, 2005. I was the first in line with pick of the litter on a male puppy and on February 22, I made the trip to Savannah to pick out my new partner. Twelve puppies is a hot mess if you have never seen that many at once. The pick of the litter female had been sold at the DU banquet the night before for A LOT of money, and there were 6 males to choose from.

It’s not easy to say no to a puppy. They all will run up and love all over you. You have to spend some time with them. I had a couple frozen duck wings and one or two showed almost no interest at all, so that narrowed the field a bit. Three of them were very much into the wing and fought over it and then would carry it off and try to eat it. One of those puppies however, would always carry whatever he had back to me. Even after I had been there for a couple hours, this little guy who they called ‘Bullet’ after the Lynard Skynard song, would amble over every ten minutes wagging his tail just to say, “Hey Boss… just checking in… call me if you need me.”

I knew then that was the one.

The Solana’s lived on a marsh island just off the Savannah River named Dutch Island. So it seemed logical that the dog be named ‘Dutch’.

I have to admit, I cried a couple times on the ride back to Charleston. Dutch rode on my lap the whole way home. He whimpered a few times, but mostly just curled up and slept. I vividly remember tears running down my cheeks, tears of happiness, excitement and anticipation for the years of hunts we would share together.

As we rode up the coastal highway, I rubbed his head and made him a promise, “We are going to have some good adventures together you and me red dog.”

He was a pretty good puppy. He didn't tear up anything too awful. One pair of shoes, the strap on a gun case, a dust jacket off a book. He was hell on plush toys that had squeakers inside and ate up every single dog bed I ever bought him… right through adult-hood. At 9 weeks, he gave me ‘the look’. Anyone who has ever trained a dog knows what ‘the look’ is… it’s that time when the dog decides he is ready to learn, when he stops fighting the leash, understands his name, and in two weeks time, sit, heel, kennel and come are easy to teach.

Dutch was a natural retriever. He just had it. He had a lot of drive to please and while he was never a super-star (due to the shortcomings of his owner) he always did what I expected him to do. 

He was a ‘Water Dog’ trained puppy. I didn't have a ton of money and never will, so we did the best we could together. We trained every day, rain or shine. When he was 8 months old, I scraped together $650 and sent him to Chris Bishop at Goose Pond Kennels in Johnsonville, SC to be force-fetched and polished up where my training was lacking. It was a long 6 weeks, but it cemented the drive in that dog and he was better than I had hoped.

We shot birds that first winter of 05-06 in the low country and I got to experience Arkansas for the first time that year also. We went back home to Virginia and killed a few birds there as well. I moved back to Virginia in early 2007 and went to work for Bass Pro in Hampton, knowing that in two years they would be opening a big store in Richmond I wanted to get to know the company to start in management at the new place. Maybe I would finally get a real job. Working four 10 hour days and commuting 80 miles each way for a while gave me three days off to hunt, and we took advantage of it.

Dutch in his pup-tent

I bought my War Eagle about the same time I got Dutch. We hunted the Paumunky River a bit, but the Mattaponi is where we made our mark. In the days before internet scouting and the ‘Duck Dynasty Wanna-Be’s’ (also known as Hoodies for the hooded sweat-shirts they seem to prefer to wear while hunting to go with all the barrel stickers on their guns) we had the river and the marshes almost all to ourselves. Limits came fairly easy and seldom was there ever a time we didn't at least kill a few. Most mornings we would hunt alone, just the two of us. Our favorite method was to ignore the blind altogether and climb up in the marsh… me in a layout blind and Dutch in his pup-tent. The birds would land right in our laps, the shots were easy and so were the retrieves. Dutch and I felt like all-stars.

Dad would come sometimes and I had a girlfriend who was also into duck hunting that would come occasionally. My two best friends Kyle and Kevin were largely weekend warriors, and starting out families of their own, their time was limited, but we all got to shoot quite a few birds together. Dutch was always there, and for the first 5 years of his life picked up over 100 doves and nearly 100 ducks and geese combined each season. For a Virginia boy whose family owns a combined two acres in neighborhoods and has never made more than $45,000 a year, that’s a right high number of birds.

Girlfriends came and went. I moved in and moved out and moved around like most young bachelors do. Dutch was always my constant. I avoided (not entirely by choice) ever getting a ‘real job’ and worked full-time ‘subsistence’ jobs clinging to my dreams of getting to hunt and write for a living… despite having absolutely no clue how to go about it, nor the connections to get there. I suppose I was living in a fantasy world that consumed most of the best years of my young life. That dog and I lived it up.

I lived over a 4 car garage in Chesapeake for a couple years in my mid-late 20s. Having parted ways with Bass Pro and never looking back at corporate retail again, I went back to work in a small shop doing mostly archery work and firearms sales, while starting to pursue my captain’s license to run a charter boat on the side. Up until I became a father, those were some of the happiest days of my life. Hardly any responsibility, nobody to answer to, just a very basic schedule to keep. It was just a big open space, one bathroom, closet, sink, cabinets and microwave. Most of my cooking was on propane stove outside or the grill. It had a big fenced in yard and a place for my boat. Close to work, it was perfect for the two of us.

The only downside was the place wasn't insulated very well (at all). It had a pellet stove for heat that worked about half the time, and still didn't warm the place up any. It would go out halfway through the night and the pellets would pile up and pour out the sides. That winter was one of the coldest of the last 15 years, and you would have to pee a hole through the ice in the toilet in the morning. Why the pipes never burst is beyond me. Dutch was my main source of heat. He would actually try and crawl in the sleeping bag with me. He was never a very ‘cuddly’ dog, but always had to be touching you… sitting on your feet or up against your leg. If you have ever had a golden, you know exactly what I mean.

When I met my wife, I don’t think she was really wild about Dutch at first, if only because the dog was higher on the ‘importance list’ than she was (for a couple years I even told her as much). But like everyone else, she fell in love with Dutch. The first night we spent together, Dutch actually slept at her feet instead of mine. I was insulted, but took it as a sign that she was worth keeping around.

While he was pretty good as a puppy, he would break bad from time to time as an adult dog. He was a true ninja when it came to stealing food. This dog, normally clumsy and loud and aloof, turned into an apex predator when it came to taking a steak or a cookie off the kitchen counter. He would be in the other room, and you would turn around and it would be gone. You would go to investigate that most likely suspect, only to find him asleep, upside down against the wall... tail wagging when you walked in. It wasn't until I found some crumbs on his nose and subsequently caught him in the act that I stopped questioning my own sanity.

Dutch chewed up my navigational chart three days before I took my exam for my captain’s license. Right out of the blue. There were six other charts rolled up next to that one. Books, toys, bones, shoes… nope he chewed up THAT CHART. It’s impossible to beat a dog with a wet 3x5’ piece of paper but I sure tried my best… not that it mattered… a cross look was enough to make him tuck his tail.

Two weeks before my wife and I got married, Dutch got a sweet tooth and somehow got into the zippered bag where all the custom wrapped and printed Hersey kisses were that we planned to use in the gift bags at our ceremony. I really thought Kristi was going to kill him. 

It’s hilarious looking back on the times he was a stereotypical dog.

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I WAS hunting out of Dad’s boat one morning on the Mattaponi. Like usual it was just Dutch and I and we had killed a limit of teal and mallards. I had a doctor’s appointment at 9:30 so at 8 we picked up our last bird and rolled out. I had just cleared the point of the marsh, probably 8 miles from the ramp when the motor died. I pulled until I was soaked in sweat, it just wasn't going to restart… a solenoid or something electrical had gone out. Dutch and I were stranded.

I called my Dad, who basically had ZERO sympathy and offered no help. Granted looking back I couldn't really expect the man to just drop everything and send a fleet of boats to come get me, but he had contacts and friends and damnit it was 20 degrees, blowing 15-20 and I had two granola bars and a bottle of water. Sorry kid keep in touch and let me know when you make it back. Deuces.

I had the tide incoming for about an hour and wind laid down just enough that I could make decent headway. Dutch stood behind me as I took a knee on the bow with paddle in hand. He wagged his tail in a show of encouragement and I got with it. I probably made two miles in an hour, but when I lost the tide the wind picked up and it started blowing my back down river. I threw the anchor and sat there and cussed my Dad for probably two hours. Not that it was his fault, but it took my mind off being cold.

Not seriously concerned for my life, but still cold, marooned and mad as a wet hen, I decided throw the anchor to wait out the tide and maybe, just maybe, another duck hunter would come by and tow me back. I curled up on the cold floor of that aluminum boat and Dutch tucked himself right up alongside me and kept me warm. He was probably about 3 at the time, and while I cared about him more than anything, it put it in perspective just how much we cared about each other.

Right at sundown as the tide finally began to swing back incoming, my best friend Kevin rounded the bend in our buddy Omar’s boat and towed me the last few miles back. I had paddled, or thrown the anchor and drug myself about 5 ½ miles from the marsh. And I was still mad at my Dad… for weeks!


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FRIDAY evening we went through our old favorites; Duckmen 4 –Straight Powder, Take ‘Em 5 and 6. All the shooting and calling on TV seemed to perk him up at first, but when he tried to lie down and sleep I knew it was just a distraction. He turned his head away from his old favorite whopper junior with cheese (plain) and I knew then we made the right decision as hard as it was to admit it.

I turned down the volume on the TV so Dutch could rest. Everyone else went to bed, but not to sleep. I laid there on the couch next to my best friend as we had done countless evenings over the last 8 years together, watching ducks pour out of the North Dakota heavens on mute, still dreaming about the two of us doing such things in a world where people reached out to hunt with us and landowners actually said yes to grown up boys with handsome dogs and big ambitions.

At 12:30am, Dutch picked his head up slowly and looked over at me, his eyes foggy, almost sad and sunk deep in his now white face. His ears raised a little and it looked like he was trying to stand up and come over to me. I sat down on the floor and rubbed his head and scratched his ears. His tail managed to thump the floor softly a few times and I knew that there was no place he would rather be. Ducks be damned, he lived his life just to see me happy.

He laid his chin on my hand as my other hand softly stroked his fuzzy red head and his breathing got shallow. My eyes full of tears, I told him it was ok.

“Its ok pal. We had a lot of great adventures together didn’t we? I told you we would. And we will again buddy. It’s alright. You’re a good boy. I am really gonna miss you red dog.”

That was all he needed to hear. One last time that he was doing right by the man he lived his life for.

He took a deep breath and I tried to do the same, tears pouring out of my eyes... I tried not to sob, for I knew it would make him upset. His breathing got shorter and shorter and I almost drifted off to sleep with him, dreaming about that 7 week old ball of fur in my lap on the way back from Savannah; the promise of all the times we were to share, all those hot afternoon swims in the settlement ponds on Palm Cove Drive, having to walk the edge of the pond to check for gators before we started long retrieve practice on Daniel Island, the cold walks to the elementary school in Ocean View to play fetch, the wind sprint drills after baseballs in the field behind our house in Suffolk, putting up with the torment of a new baby who thinks the dog is a pony, all the hot afternoons by the sunflowers picking up doves… mouths full of feathers, getting stranded on the river, having to take the decking out of the boat to get his tent up out of the rising tide, picking up and dragging field killed geese, sleeping on his owner’s warm duck coat on the ride back home with a limit of ducks still fresh in his nose.

He sighed slowly and then my friend went to wait for me by that duck filled marsh in heaven. He died doing the thing that was most important to him… being with me… the thing he loved the most. 

Barely able to keep it together, I laid his head on the floor and went in to tell my wife that it was over. He had spared me the pain of the chore I was to do the next morning, something I will always be grateful for. I picked up my dog, wrapped in the linens and laid him on the sun room floor next to my waders and blind bag… exactly where he would have been waiting for me the morning of a hunt.

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Dutch and his first wood duck drake

HURT but numb, I started making arrangements the next morning. Contacting custom decoy carvers to have a decoy urn made for his remains. A drake wood duck… the first wild duck he ever retrieved, what seemed like just a few months ago now. We should have had five or six more seasons together… and like I did so many times the day before, I cried. That decoy will be with me on every hunt, just like the memory of my first dog… the dog every other dog will always be judged by.

We canceled the appointment at the vet, spared that green mile by grace, but brought his body over so his remains could be cremated. The trip over was silent and tear filled as my wife and I held hands and drove ten under the speed limit just to have a few more moments with our dog. A funeral procession. I looked down in my empty lap for that little ball of red fur, and kept hoping I would feel those wet jowls and cold nose on my shoulder from the back seat as I drove, or hear that tail thumping as it wagged against the rear driver side door. It wasn't until I opened the back gate to let my friend out for the last time that it really sunk in he wasn't going to jump out on his own, tail wagging and ready to go.

Trembling, I reached down and unbuckled his collar and it finally all let go. I cried like I have never before in my life. My hands full of his cold, dark red fur, I sobbed for all the adventures we were still supposed to have together. For the chance to retrieve my youngest son William’s first bird the same way he did for our oldest, Jesse. For the chance to finally make it to Canada with me and hunt the prairies and blackened skies full of mallards, sprigs, specklebellys and snows and endless acres of hunter friendly land.

But he was already there; ears up and tail wagging… waiting for me to get home.

"If tears could build a stairway,
and memories a lane,
I'd walk right up to heaven
and bring you home again."

In loving memory, from Andy and the rest of the Virginia Hunting Forum.

DUTCH

December 31, 2005 - December 6, 2014