Sunday, January 10, 2021

A good dog


It seems to be not enough to say. Consider though, the base level of dog is so much higher than the base human - full of loving kindness freely given without judgment. A good dog is an exemplification of the higher spiritual life. I try to be the man my dog thinks I am, if I could do that heaven is certain. 

 


 

My friend Ken was given a pup from the litter sired by his good dog Spot, as part of the stud fee. He'd had enough of my haverings and tergiversations about getting a dog and simply gave Artie to us. We let the boys name him. They decided on Artemis, for the Greek god of hunting, though the gender didn't quite line up (and maybe also for Artemis Fowl, also appropriate for a bird dog). Artie, for family, sometimes spelled Arty.


 

That's either dog bliss or exhaustion, maybe both.

He was a field-bred English cocker spaniel. The breed guides say, “The English Cocker is merry and affectionate, of equable disposition, neither sluggish nor hyperactive, a willing worker, and a faithful and engaging companion.”  The field-bred is made for hunting not show, bred for soundness, strength and the drive to work rather than some artificial standard of prettiness. Of these, "Generally they are a thinking breed. They learn fast and can be bored and discouraged by repetition." He ran true to breed.

Artie was a remarkable combination of family pet and an outstanding hunter. After a little training from Ken and Spot in his first year, he tried all his life to teach me how to hunt upland birds, never tiring in this thankless task, always ready for another attempt. An early lesson with Spot on the left, Artie right.


 Upon seeing me pick up a shotgun he would begin to grin and not stop.

Tell me dogs don't smile. 

My first pheasant, faithfully retrieved. This photo turned into a painting which Ian made for me for one Father's day. 


 Back in the barn the smaller child would visit in his crate. In times of distress Christopher would go to get what he called fur therapy. As he said then, "Artie is better than Mom because he doesn't press for details."


Early training and a biddable dog work well together. Here he romps through the backyard. I installed some large mesh green wire on that open fence to keep the pup inside. By the time of this picture Artie could do a standing jump and look me straight in the eye, yet he never jumped this pitiable fence. 

The gardens suffered much from dogly depredations in the early and late years. Helen worked long hours to build this lovely back yard, with something blooming in every month not deep winter. An extensive drip irrigation system underlaid the flowers. One day Artie at home with no company was bored and decided the thin black hose of the irrigation was a deadly snake which had to be rooted up and killed before the family got home. Our neighbor said it was very funny to watch as he tussled with hosing across the lawn. Helen was unamused. The books had warned us that working dogs need work to do, or they will find self-employment 'which you probably won't appreciate'. Daily walks helped.


I never could get a good portrait of Artie aware in these years. As soon as he saw me sitting or kneeling at his level he'd run over to give some love. All I'd get is a pair of loving brown eyes, closing fast.. 


My hunting education continued. One area we hunted around a substantial reservoir was the location of many long swim retrieves executed faithfully. 


Artie glares at the bird but it was really my fault for not shooting straighter. 


There were family trips too. Luckily we had a minivan which could hold a dog in his crate and a load of camping gear, with a canoe on top for luck. Here's a springtime walk in the Western slope foothills, a bit hot for dogs though.


 


This was not a dog of moderate habits. On a scale of one to ten, he was either at one or at eleven. It's possible to hunt a spaniel to death as they will not slow or stop for much of anything. Once Helen took him out to the Chatfield dog area. He plunged into the lake, hit some rebar or a submerged spike of wood which penetrated his belly, came out streaming blood and kept running. She had some trouble getting him to stop and come back to be repaired. This tendency caused Helen considerable embarrassment at the local vets, equipped as they are for comfortable pets whose main problems are under-exercise and over-eating. Taking in our bleeding and bruised swamp hunter made her feel like a bad Mom.

On hunts this meant a deal of patchwork. There were many versions. Here's an early one with rigger Ken, just a child's small T-shirt to cover the chafed armpits and belly.

The next picture shows robodog version two, resolute and ready for the fray. He started dragging his R paw, so it would abrade on top. Bandage, duct-tape and boot over that would keep it from bleeding too much. On the hunt a week before this picture we'd run into sand burrs, horrible little things with long sharp spikes, he got them in his armpits and chafed raw. For that, ointment then gauze then stretchy self-stick bandage, then duct tape over the whole lot for protection. The duct tape is stuck to the bandage rather than the fur, so can cut it off easily. Then an orange skid plate because his low-slung belly gets abraded by all the cat-tails and other undergrowth he goes crashing through.  If I could get him to slow down a bit it would help, but he never did slow until the end.

Two very truly run-after dogs loafing in the sun. The good dog Spot had died here on the farm at a young age: came running up to Ken one lunchtime, yipped, licked his hand and died. We guessed some kind of anaphylactic shock but never did find out for certain. Spot sleeps beneath the orchard trees to the east of the barn, waiting for us to catch up. Here in the picture is Tau, a springer spaniel and successor to Spot. 


Artie came along for many of my bootless elk hunt scouting expeditions. Here I am wandering into a maze of boulders while he waits patiently at the edge, sure the dumb human will soon be back. On this trip we both slept in the back of the minivan much to his delight. I confess I liked it too. At home he wasn't allowed upstairs. In the barn we'd sleep on cots in front of the woodstove, dogs on a blanket. He'd get up every hour or so in the wee hours of morning to poke me with a wet nose, 'oy is it time to go hunt yet ? come on, lazy bones, slug-a-bed !'


After hunting season we'd plunge up to our chests in snow for exercise, at least some of the party would.

 
Back down to level 1 in front of another woodstove, more comfort than a thin blanket on a cold concrete floor in the barn.


His cousins came to visit from Australia bringing some soft toys for Artie. That grey soft toy in the picture of the dog as a young pup, lasted about two days before being gnawed to shreds. So I'd never thought to buy him more in his mature years. Fortunately his cousins knew better. This white rat pictured is still in the basket of dog things that is shelved until I can overcome my grief and adopt a new companion.

I felt bad having deprived him of his mouth comforts. Socks and shoes would move around the house and garden like glacial erratics, deposited wherever the carry stopped: not chewed or torn, just carried for comfort and the mouth feel. This used to make us late for school as the only pair of shoes the child could tolerate on his feet, would be in widely separated units, one covered with dew or snow.

In the early years we'd take him to be groomed, like a suburban cossetted hearthrug dog. For this as for the patching up of cuts and bruises, I ended up doing rough and ready home jobs. My ragged hairchops never bothered him much. In fact he seemed to enjoy them, a nice soothing buzzing sort of massage with the clippers I guess.


 
In 2018 we had another hunt by the reservoir. Several pheasants got up together and many shots rang out. In all the confusion we did not notice one that was only lightly hit, flew far out over the water before dropping - but Artie noticed. We started to move on to the next covert and wondered where he'd gotten to. Far far out there was a little head with a mouthful of bird, doggedly swimming and swimming back to shore. After this he lay down in the shade and watched us walk away. That was the first but not the last time I had to carry him out of the field, like a lost lamb across my shoulders.

On another occasion we'd walked for ten (me) or twenty (him) miles through empty Colorado fields without seeing a single bird. Coming back there was a small creek where Artie put up a wounded goose. Geese are not usually hunted by flushing with a dog but I overcame my surprise and shot it anyway. The long hill back up to the car saw another lie-down strike. Carrying a 12lb goose, 35lb dog and 8lb shotgun up the hill altogether was a bit more exercise than planned.

Here he is on a hunt in 2019, thinking there is something in those cattails. His enthusiasm for busting through dense thickets had waned with the years. At the end of the day like this I usually had to be the dog struggling through the thick stuff while he patrolled the fringes to ensure no-one ran out.


By the end of the hunt he was fully ready to go home, hopped into the truck and waited for us.

 
Early in 2020 we went on a Colorado hunt where he did his usual sterling job of finding me birds. I missed one and had a misfire of the shotgun on another, a vegetarian day then. Artie was still limping a week after the hunt which was unusual. Also his right shoulder felt strange, as if a bone had come loose and was sticking up hard and pointed in the wrong place. The vet took him in and disappeared for a longer time than I liked. The verdict was osteosarcoma which had already metastasized into his backbone and lungs, nothing to be done but hospice care. This cancer is more common in big dogs, as the vet said, 'dogs that abuse their bones'. Well that's a match for Artie poor old boy. 

With the pandemic at least we got to spend a lot of time together in the home office. In the mornings I'd come downstairs on my commute and be greeted as usual at the bottom of the stairs with a wagging dog bearing a sock or a shoe as a love offering. As the months went on he stopped getting out of bed, instead wagging a cheerful greeting from his rest when I came into the kitchen. Coffee made, I'd head for the study, and he'd limp over to a blanket on the floor.

 


As both Artie and I were old and cranky by now the dog parks like Chatfield no longer worked for us. He'd always be focused on hunting while the other dogs wanted to socialize. Often there would be dogs with issues, too. I found the closest National Forest without leash restrictions and we'd drive up there to run around in peace and quiet.


 
In the evenings I'd be reading and become slowly aware of an intense pressure to pat someone, beaming up from my side. 

We took Christopher out to college, thirteen hours in a car each way. Artie stayed home at the kennel run by the vet. On the thirteen hours home, we got a call to say his back was done and he could no longer stand up or walk. One of the vet techs kindly stayed on a Sunday so we could pick him up. He couldn't walk but he could still wag and lick my face. We spent an afternoon together then called the assisted dying vet service. 

We buried him on the farm near his dad Spot, on the hill above the swamp, where the pheasants still strut and cackle.

I put a tail feather from the first bird this year on the grave.


 

Artie's distant cousin Addie has given these lessons to her owners too. Addie's still running, follow her at @addiedoesstuff.
(update 2021 - @addiedoesstuff has become @mountainroche due to intimations of mortality). 

“Addie has taught us that love has to be unconditional, because there is no such thing as conditional love. If someone has to earn it, you don’t actually love them,” says David. “That love is a renewable resource for Addie. She gives it to everyone, and that doesn’t make it less special; it makes it more special. It makes life more real and death more real. In contemplating her mortality—something we’ve already done a few times already—I think, ‘What a life she had led!’ Not because of the adventures, but in the amount of spirit she has given to other people. "
“We say, ‘You are amazing,’ not because someone earn accolades or wins races,” David explains. “We say that because someone moves forward into the unknown and goes for it. What Addie has taught us is that everyone deserves that. You can lift a lot of people up with that attitude and bring a lot of light into your own life, too.”

A paragraph from Teresa of Avila and/or John of the Cross, the provenance is not clear but the sentiments are exact. Via Poemas del rio Wang. 

And yet, upon that warm, alert animal is the weight and care of enormous sadness.

For what sometimes overwhelms us always clings to it, too—a kind of memory that tells us that what we're now striving for was once nearer and truer and attached to us with infinite tenderness. Here all is distance, there it was breath.

 

A feather in 2021, 


A picture from 2022, no feather in tribute this year, I missed. Tau is still looking. 





 

Friday, October 16, 2020

elk dreaming

In the summer I went out here on a scouting trip. It was supposed to be a moderate hike with time to explore for elk lairs. The trip thought of as moderate turned into a survival plod while my bad knee groused about the load. Elk season dawned: the knee and I blindly plunged like fate into the lone backcountry.

A winter storm on the passes, Loveland and Vail. First plan was to hike in before dark, but slow going traffic and snow meant arrival at the trailhead in last light. From the edge of Routt National Forest to the end of the road there was an elk camp in every turnout. Four inches of snow on the road had been driven flat in less than a day. Hunter numbers are dropping steadily, while crowding in hunt season increases steadily too. This apparent paradox is easily resolved - no-one is building new elk forests, just as no-one is making new trout streams. New condos, new private ranching fences, yes.  Bigger RVs to hunt from, expansive canvas tent structures that use wood frames and portable power tools to construct, quieter generators for power in camp, yes: all the appurtenances of consumer fetishism, packed densely into the dwindling remains of wild country.

I think often of the Richard Brautigan short story where he finds sections of trout stream stacked up in the hardware store, available on easy purchase terms.

Slept in the truck, the bed is short but gets to 6ft with the tailgate down. Only an inch of toes hanging over the edge, then. The zero-degree sleeping bag kept me warm while the outer nylon frosted into an icy shell by 3 am. Up and hit the trail in moonlight and several inches of snow, 30lb backpack plus 8lb of rifle. This went OK for a mile or two and thousand feet up, then Windy Gap nearly blew me over. After this is a short section of ledge trail with a good long plummet off to the side.
In daylight on the way back,

now imagine that at 4am with snow, blowing snow, stiff winds, 2ft of snow over no perceptible trail. The headlight beam petered out in a haze of white, though I had a strong sense of vasty deeps in the windy dark. 

Chickened out (prudence is the name I'd prefer), crawled back into the woods for shelter and waited for daylight. Finally got to use that survival bivy sack I've been carrying for decades. By daylight another hunter had gone up and left footsteps. 

Further along there were fresh elk tracks. By now it was too late to spy on elk movements if any, in the shades of dawn.

I've never seen an elk during hunting season. So it seemed reasonable to drop the pack and follow these for an hour, until meeting my own footprints coming back around a tangle of deadfall. The elk like a manoeuvre termed the j-hook, circling back on their own tracks to check for followers. Clearly I'm not as smart as the average elk. Still don't know where he went after the hook, maybe was lying doggo in the deadfall.

Back through the pathless woods to the trail which disappeared again under blown snow at the ridge. Picked a drainage to follow which I believed would intersect the trail lower and luckily was right. I've done that before only to end up on a cliff with fine views but no way forward. 

Dropped the pack in camp spot and ran around the woods looking for signs of elk life. Plenty of old sign, no fresh tracks, no bedding areas, not much of anything. I'd have hiked back out if physically capable of it. Good country though. 

Spent the night in perfect silence with Mars glowing redly in the east, moving overhead as we turned toward dawn. Up at 5am to hike up a ridge and look for beasts in the early light. There was more deadfall navigation to the hilltop.

One view from the ridge of empty country,

and another, 


Nothing to be seen except another two hunters vivid in their hunting orange. Later there were two shots, booming into the silence of late fall in this high country. 


Walked the dark woods along the ridges and past potential bedding areas identified from topo maps and satellite pictures, nobody home. Scrambled up another peak in the evening to look around, country all quiet and still.

Out again in the morning, three and a half hours to do five miles and 2000 feet of elevation change. 

There was a day left in the season, but I had made no plans for hunting from the road. My strategy had always been to be fitter and stronger than the other guys, move fast and cover ground in the back country. I hadn't realized just how old I have grown. 

Gave up and drove down the hills, fished a bit at a lake on the way. Hoped for pike but found none in the surf.

On my last cast with a big white streamer, the Pfleuger reel chattered as something made a strong long run. Thought I'd found a good pike, until the trout leapt high over whitecap waves, a gout of spray disintegrating over the long curve of orange fly line bending downwind.

From Brautigan: 

 As a child when did I first hear about trout fishing in America?  
From whom? I guess it was a stepfather of mine.   
Summer of 1942.   
The old drunk told me about troutfishing. When he could talk,  
he had a way of describing trout as if they were a precious
and intelligent metal.   
Silver is not a good adjective to describe what I felt when
he told me about trout fishing.   
I'd like to get it right.   
Maybe trout steel. Steel made from trout. The clear
snow-filled river acting as foundry and heat.   
Imagine Pittsburgh.   
A steel that comes from trout, used to make buildings,  
trains and tunnels.   
The Andrew Carnegie of Trout!

A small pretty brown out of the tailwater below the dam, then home. 

Kept and ate the big one, red as a salmon. This was the last dinner at home for the older son before he left for his first job. We ate the fish with gratitude and reverence.

Told the other son at college about my elk trip, cold dark snowy and tough. He said "so pretty good then". Of course he's right..



Tuesday, August 11, 2020

exercise in moderation

is what the cardiologist suggested. Usually in summer I like to do trail runs up to high mountain lakes and streams, fish a bit, then run back. She advised that climbing 2-3000ft up a mountain, with heart rate near max for several hours, does not qualify as moderate. Who knew ?

The last time I did that, figured I had probably another nine years. Turns out to be zero. Indulging myself in strenuous exercise has always been my drug of choice, never realized until now that it was an overindulgence like any other.

Ran a couple of times since the doctor advice, easy 3 miler around the park, which went fine except the bum left knee woke up from its slumbers and started paining again. Back on the bicycle it is, then.

Instead of the trail runs, decided on a backpack in to the high country. Theoretically this was mostly to scout an area for elk hunting. All my elk hunting is theoretical as they are hard to find come hunting season.  Packed in a Fenwick 75-5 with a nice lightweight Battenkill III reel, by way of solace in the moments when not failing to find elk sign. By concentrating and throwing things out, I was able to keep the pack under 30lbs, food water and all, which is a personal record of sorts.


Not quite at the trailhead, did not trust my 2wd on that road, instead parked in this pretty meadow/dispersed camping spot and walked the half mile.

This is me resisting temptation and not fishing the stream yet. I had miles to go and spots to scout. There was more water than expected, always happy to see the streams running well, though it does make crossings slower.


About six miles in after walking in from behind that far ridge. These burn areas are basically feedlots for the elk, growing full of elk chow. The fire was in 2002. Oddly there has been no new tree growth - no new pine or aspen yet.


The heart rate stayed down but the legs quit on me.. after about 8 miles the bum knee was complaining, heel bursitis had flared up, and the muscles didn't want to lift anything anymore, never mind me plus a 30lb backpack.


It's a sign ! at last, a sign !
Not sure what it means though.. 

The trail (on L of picture) was so faint I kept mistaking game trails for the route, winding up puzzled in the middle of deadfall and blowdowns. Since the fire the trees have been falling steadily producing these lush meadows crisscrossed with logs. I've watched elk delicately stepping through the pick-up-sticks but my legs are not long enough for that dance. 

By this time there were more elk hoofprints on the trail than bootprints or horse hoofs. Can you spot the elk in this picture ? 


Me either, but they are somewhere.  None of the spots up this trail panned out. There was a fine little campsite with evidence of someone's hunt success.


Back down to the stream, which has a nice meadow section here. There were rises going on among the weedbeds. It's very unusual to see this kind of weedy meadow section in the high country.


I waited until the trail went down to another crossing, where there were more rises. Oddly these fish were selective to the microcaddis hatch going on. They're supposed to be easy up here.. got a couple little brookies to about 9", fat and healthy, no pictures as they flopped off while I was trying to pose them.  I have some #18 Henryville caddis that usually work well for this, back home in the everything bag. #14 Goddard was the smallest in the bag today which was not good enough.

The plan was 13 miles and 2400ft ascent to camp on a trout lake at about 6pm, with time for a few casts. Camped instead on a fishless lake about 2 miles and 400ft of climbing short of goal. It was still a good camp.  And there was evening,


and there was morning,


Legs felt oddly good to knock off the two miles over to trout in 45min. The fish were rising..


and the views couldn't be beat.


Caught that handsome 13" in the picture on a beetle. Spent some time on a nice 16" that was ranging around fast and rising sporadically, further down the bank. First attempt left the beetle out there for several minutes, then as I moved it he was coming up and sheered off. Several other flies got refusals - he'd race up toward them then turn down with a dismissive flick of the tail. Still I had my entertainment. 

Quit and went looking for elk spots again. One of these looked really good. Not co-incidentally there was a big outfitter camp a mile away.

On the way down there was a tiny brook through a meadow. At the stream crossing there were half a dozen brookies in this little pool. Let them be, wondered about the lower reaches.


Another six miles out and dragging again, took a long slow time. A good walk though. Here the fireweed blooms in the old burn. That's also elk chow.


My  favorite thing to do in the truck is to sit on the tailgate and drink a cold beer, after a hike/canoe/backpack/fish. Did that.

Stopped by a roadside stream for a bit. Brawling little creek, tough going along the banks and the weedy rocks. There were fish everywhere. This 11" brookie,


a 10" rainbow, 

and a number smaller. This was the simple fishing I'd expected after the long walks, but here it was on the road. Oh well at least it was there, somewhere.



Wednesday, May 27, 2020

on not catching cutthroat trout 2014

This started life as a post on fiberglassflyrodders.com. The images vanished with time.
2014 is history now, so I remember the past in the hope of repeating it. As Max Beerbohm said, history doesn't repeat itself, historians repeat each other.


If not catching fish, might as well do it somewhere high and handsome..

5 miles hike into Rocky Mountain National Park, up from 8500ft to 10 000ft. On the way up we met an 83-year-old man turning around at the creek where the bridge had been washed out by last years' floods. He said he didn't want to take his old bones hopping across those rocks anymore, but he could still get up and down the trails, so he did. My role model for getting older.


Ken did get two cutts, here is one.


This is what we used to think was the native Colorado greenback cutthroat trout. Following DNA analysis, turns out to be just a subspecies of the Colorado River cutt, finely adapted to its life in the high country. See the article by Erin Block in the TU Trout magazine Fall 2014.

Ten years ago this lake and drainage was full of these beautiful cutts, 8-12" long on average, with the occasional 15" monster. We had not been up here in years and found the cutts have been outcompeted by the brook trout, which tend to overpopulate and get stunted in this environment. So we caught about 60 fish between us, 58 of them small brook trout 4-6", pretty little fish but not the outrageous beauty of the natives. I did not take any pictures of them, being haunted by the ghosts of the vanished cutthroat and too sad to photograph the meager brookies.

We spent a couple of hours bushwhacking down along the stream, in case the cutts were holding out in some remote pool or riffle. Here I am trying to look as inconspicuous as a tree.


Shortly after this I fell backwards into another tree and ripped my ancient Red Ball waders apart. That began a five year quest to find a pair of waders as good, detouring through a lot of cheap wet waders and damp feet, before culminating in $400 Simms. The Red Balls cost $20 and lasted over twenty years. I'm suspending judgement on the Simms until then, I should live so long. So far they've outperformed. That means staying dry - waders have one job. Apparently it's no longer possible to make dry waders at the sub-$400 price point.

All down the stream, nothing but shoals of desperate brook trout. 

Here's my Fibatube (Hardy) 3 1/2 weight, dragged off the dusty back shelf. This doesn't get much exercise in the mountain West, as I prefer a longer rod for the open streams and lakes and winds we usually encounter. However it's perfectly suited to the tree tunnels of the small high streams, had forgotten how it will happily cast nothing more than a tapered leader accurately and easily.


The original 6'1" was too short for me, so added a butt extension and built the handle over that, to make a 6'10" rod. The first time I took it out on a backpack trip in the Drakensberg, it ran into a big rainbow on one of the low lakes, a shock for all concerned. Next trip found a 19" brown in a tiny stream at dusk, after catching little rainbows all day - nearly fell flat on my back as the fish rushed off three pools upstream. The luck tapered off after that unfortunately. Still it catches fish to the full extent of its powers, hindered only by the fisherman.

Here's the brown, dead. Catch and kill in those days. Them's good eating. 



The reel is an Argus 56LT. At first thought it was a copy of the Orvis CFO, but after looking at the Abel in Ken's picture, maybe it's copying that ?  Either way it's a nice little reel, a good copy and well sized for a DT 4wt and some backing. It has a devilish small elbow spring in the retaining clip, which I lost twice and found once. Now it has an artisanal spring handmade from safety pin wire.

Five miles back out and down in the gloaming, to a fine burger and beer at Oskar Blues Brewery in Lyons - highly recommended.

Next day we tried a big Wyoming river. On the drive in a big old moose crossed the road, stopped in the middle to glare at us, and took his time shambling across. This was supposed to be an easier hike, into the canyon from the plains,


Unfortunately we got a mite confused (as Dan'l Boone used to call getting lost) and wound up going up and down the canyon sides a couple of times, without benefit of trails. It was real pretty though, and we walked up on another moose resting in the shade on top. He was a young fellow, a fine glossy black beast, who looked at us in horror and ran off, all elbows and knees. Here we are about to clamber down the 500ft back to the river again.


The fishing was awful slow, so we slogged out and hiked in to a different creek further down the drainage. This is the first time in 15 years of fishing together that Ken and I didn't have good catching. Ken was grumbling that his good-luck charm (me) had stopped working, I grumbled right back that my WY guide (him) wasn't up to snuff anymore.. 

One nice brown in the new creek as consolation, and a smattering of smaller ones. Pretty anyway.



On the drive out there was a family group of moose (meeses ? mice ?), papa, mama, and baby, browsing next to the road. These were quite unperturbed by us but the light was low, so no good pictures. Here's a fuzzy pic of papa.