ONE
By
Gene Hill
From the book Tears and Laughter



I ADMIRED THE DOG out of courtesy, and that was about it. He wasn’t anything special to look at – just your nice, solid, big-headed black Lab. I’ve seen hundreds just like him, give or take an inch here or a detail there. His work in the field was efficient, but not exciting. He wasn’t what a real trial man would call steady, and as often as not, he’d drop a goose to readjust a hold; generally preferring to drag it along by a wing. He did have one peculiar habit, I noticed – he never picked up a bird, no matter how dead it was, without stepping on the neck with one foot first and holding it there until he’d grabbed the wing. I asked about this, and his owner told me that it was a habit he’d had from the first, since his first goose had picked him pretty bad. This bit of cause and effect reasoning pleased me being a “once burned, twice shy” person myself.

This day in a goose pit on the eastern shore of Maryland was as common as the surrounding mud. Intermittent flights had us calling, more for the amusement of it than any real hope of turning them. But every so often, a pair or a small flock of five or six would toll close enough for a shot and since we were in no hurry or that anxious to take geese, we took turns gunning. By mid-afternoon we each had two geese – enough for our personal satisfaction, but the weather was mild so we had come to a mutual unspoken agreement to just sit there and chat rather than pick up and go our separate ways. It was a lovely way to spend an afternoon – gunning talk mostly, a little fishing talk, some book titles exchanged – just your average small talk between two relative strangers who found common ground and an occasional bit of laughter that sweetened the conversation putting each of us at ease and wanting the other to find us good company…a small, pleasant spontaneous friendship.

He hardly mentioned his Lab, and neither did I, but I was pleased to notice that the dog sat leaning a little against his master’s leg or put his head on his foot when he chose to lie down, and that my companion’s hand was stroking the dog or messing with his ears or scratching him behind the neck. It was just the sort of thing any one of us might do, an ordinary circumstance, a common-place relationship. Nor did I find it strange that the dog paid absolutely no attention to me whatsoever. There are dogs that are nuisances for affection (several of mine were like that from being spoiled and encouraged to play) and other that like to keep to themselves, and others that are clearly one-person creatures.

He had not bothered to bring a lunch, and I, for once, had gotten myself together and packed one. As usual, when I do get the lunch-making urge, I tend to go overboard and had more than enough to share, which I gladly did. We each had two sandwiches, and as he ate his, he fed the other to his dog at the same pace, bite for bite. A sandwich and a half was enough for me, so I offered the dog the half left over. He wouldn’t touch it from my hand, so I placed it on the floor of the blind in front of him where it sat unnoticed and untasted until I asked my friend if the dog were on some sort of self-imposed diet.

“No, I don’t think so,” he laughed and picked up the food and, as before, fed it to the dog bite by bite. You can usually sense when someone has been waiting for a chance to talk about something that needs to be aired. You feel that he’s been looking for the right time and place and ear. I was hoping that I’d have that privilege, so I just sat there and watched him dribble pieces of that sandwich, pieces about the size of 00 Buck, to a dog that was not lonely used to this little game, but so delighted with that he was making soft moaning noises and rolling his eyes like a fundamentalist convert.

“Pete here is about the worst dog I’ve ever owned,” he said with some hesitation, “but he’s taught me more about dogs, in a strange way, than most of the others I’ve had – and there have been quite a few.”

I just sat there and stared at the floor of the blind, not wanting to look at him, because he didn’t want to look at me…right now, he wanted a listener, a sympathetic and understanding one – one who had some knowledge of what he was talking about, but not a conversation – just an ear would do fine for the time being.

“If you’ve ever followed the big field trial circuit, you’d probably know my name. For quite a few years I was the amateur trainer that most of the pro’s worried about. And they had good reason: I had the money, the time, the drive and the dogs. And you needed all that just to start because you were in against the Belmonts, the Roosevelts, big steel money, big oil money and just plain money so big that hardly anyone remembered where it all had come from. One handler drove his dogs to the trials in an old Rolls Royce fitted up like a kennel truck; the people he worked for drove Rolls’ and they didn’t want their dogs in anything less! I didn’t go that far…but I wasn’t too far behind. I’ve charted more than one plane to take my dogs where I though they ought to be running and I never regretted a penny of it.

“I even had Purdey make me a pair of side-by-sides just for field trial gunning in case my dogs didn’t finish so I’d still be part of the action—and you learn a lot about certain dogs when you’re a gun – but that’s getting a little away from my story.

“It all started simply enough – and typically as far as I’m concerned. I’ve always loved competition – I’ve been a top flight amateur golfer, a tournament winner on the trap and skeet circuit, and got to where they knew I was there in the live bird rings of Madrid and Monte Carlo. Then I got to thinking about getting a dog. I traveled so much in my early days that owning one didn’t make much sense. My hosts, when I went shooting, all had fine kennels, so it didn’t make any difference if I had any or not. In fact, it was better that I didn’t. But when a big holding company bought me out for more money than I could ever spend and moved me up to some spot that was all title and no work, I began to look around for something new to take up. It was just about destined that I would start field trialing Labs.

“I’d been a member of one of those fancy Long Island duck clubs for years and had seen some pretty good dogs. It might sound silly, but I believe that a man has to have a dog and a breed of dog that suits his personality. If I believed in reincarnation, I don’t doubt that I would come back as a Lab – or would like to. It’s a little vain I know, but I saw myself as brave, honest and strong, as Hemingway might have put it, and that’s what I like about the Lab. It’s all up front, nothing held back.

“Anyway, one of my duck hunting buddies at the old Sprig Club had a litter of dogs out of good field trial stock and he gave me a male as sort of a retirement present. He said that at worst he’d be somebody I could talk to and take care of and get the same in return. After I’d spent a few weeks with the pup I decided to have a professional take a look at him. I felt that he might have what it would take to be a trial dog, but I believe in the opinions of the people who do it everyday, not just an amateur appraisal.

“The professional not only liked the dog but made an offer then and there to take him for training, and I agreed. He had a fine reputation and I liked his whole approach to the training idea. He was to start the dog, and when he was satisfied, I’d come down and spend a week or so with him and learn to run the dog myself. Then I’d get a training schedule to work on and check back with him for a few days on a regular basis. If the dog did exceptionally well, I’d take him over completely and campaign in the major stakes. His name was Wonderdog – because I wondered what I’d do with him when I first got him; a little joke with myself. If you follow the retrievers you know how far he got and what a piece of pure bad luck it was when he didn’t become National Champion. He was killed a little while after his first Nationals – an assistant trainer was in an accident and the dog trailer was totally demolished. I was hurt by the loss, of course, but by then I’d been committed to try for another dog as good as he was He’d sired a litter and I arranged to get the pick for stud service.

“If anything, he was better than his father, a bit more aggressive and strangely a bit more biddable. It was almost as if he felt destined to compete and understood what was expected of him all along. I called him Little Wonder – another private joke with myself. Almost everyone was soon calling him One, short for number one, because that’s what he looked like from the start. He was one of the hottest derby dogs anyone had seen when he was right, and he usually was. I’d never thought of a dog as an athlete before One, but when he took to water he reminded me of a diver – I know it’s silly to think of a dog having “form” but he did – and I never got over the idea that he knew it and worked at it.

By the time he was three, he had totally captivated the trial circuit – not just in wins and placements, but by his personality – his pure competitiveness and genius for doing just the right thing at the right time. I know for sure that more than one judge laid out a series with just him in mind, but as hard as they tried to challenge him, he was usually up to it. Of course he had an off-day every now and then, disinterested or bored or maybe tired, but even then he did his job, but without the fire he was famous for. In his first National at Bombay Hook he placed third. I don’t think he deserved to win, but I think he deserved at least second. The head judge and I weren’t exactly friends, since I’d beaten his dog at several important trials and he wasn’t above playing a little politics with some nationally known names.

I’d planned to retire One after his first in the Nationals, and just use him as a stud dog and gunning companion. We’d become pretty close and I thought he deserved a little rest and some fun – and some of the fun had gone out of the competition as far as I was concerned. But I did want that win for him in the worst way. He worked hard for it and almost all of us still believed that he had the class and the talent to go all the way; if any dog deserved it, One certainly did. The more we worked him that season, the sharper he got. I didn’t think there was much room for improvement, but in subtle ways he just looked better. His long blinds were precision itself and when he was stopped to the whistle, he really stopped! It was as if he were reading your mind – I heard one judge remark in a friendly way that he looked as if he were showing off. I’m making him sound as if he were absolutely perfect, but he did have one small fault. Not in every trial, but every now and then for some reason he’d make one or two little yelps on a retrieve on land. I always put it down as pure enthusiasm and the trainer and I had long given up trying to make him stop. More often than not, we’d be the only ones to notice it.”

Here he paused for so long I didn’t think he was going to go on with the rest of the story. He was rumpling his dog and searching for the right words and the strength to say them. I had the feeling that this was a story that he’d never told before and perhaps didn’t want to -- yet knew that he must so he could get a different grip on it himself. For some strange reason I thought of the words to an old song about “hanging your tears out to dry” -- how perfectly put, how perfectly true.

For the first time since he’d begun, he turned to look at me and I could see the gray, sad sparkle of small tears. I turned away a bit to give him a moment of privacy. He covered his face with his handkerchief for just a second and went on.

“I’d say the chances of what happened ever happening are more than one in a million; one of those random tragedies that always seem to strike the innocent, the casual passerby. There was a strand of wire, just one, that was only about two feet long between an old post and a tree. I’d heard One making his odd yipping noise and suddenly he went end over end in the air and lay still. Both the judges and I rushed out knowing instantly that something fearful had happened, and there was One stretched out, dead from a broken neck. A small trickle of blood ran down the corners of his jaw where he’d run into the wire with his mouth open.

“I carried him back to the station wagon and put him on the front seat and started to drive. I don’t remember how long it was or where I went, but I do remember that I kept rubbing his head believing for the longest time that he’d suddenly sit up and everything would be all right. Today is the second time in my life that I’ve cried: that was the first.

“There’s a small graveyard behind the lodge at the Sprig Club where our special dogs were put to rest and the whole club turned out to help me put him there. I had a blanket made of his ribbons and my gunning coat was his pillow. He always loved to sleep on that whenever he had the chance. One of the members read a list of his wins and when finished with that, he paused and in a soft tenor voice began to sing Auld Lang Syne, and everyone , except me, joined in with him.”

He stopped for a minute and blew his nose: I must confess I did the same.

“I virtually stopped gunning for a long time after that. When people asked me why, I told them that my favorite hunting partner had passed away and almost none of them ever thought that it might have been just my dog. Funny, isn’t it, how few can understand the relationship a man can have with his dog? And yet, I can tell you now that there were few, if any, things in my life that meant as much to me as One, and how odd but true that an emptiness like that is there forever.

It’s been about five years since I lost One, and last fall a friend of mine, the same one that sang that afternoon at the duck club, came to my house and rang the bell. When I opened the door, he reached in and put a puppy in my arms and said, ‘It’s about time Pete had someone to look after,’ and turned and left.”

“This is Pete.” At the sound of his name, Pete looked up and made some sort of a face that I’ll say was as close to smiling as a dog can get.

“When I said that Pete was the worst of my dogs, I didn’t mean anything other than that I’d never trained him. I just let him be Pete. And that’s been enough, more than enough. They say that a man deserves one good dog in his life. . . but that’s not true. I’ve had a couple, and in his own way, Pete’s right there in my heart with them all now. It’s a full space with two empty ones beside it, if you can see it that way.”

I nodded to let him know that I agreed, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t think anything needed to be said just at that moment.

He began, after a little while, to talk about something else, and after giving me his card, he thanked me for listening and said it was time for him and Pete to be heading on home. I said goodbye and told him that I’d wait here a little while longer in the blind just to watch the sun come down. But that wasn’t the whole truth. What I wanted to do was sit there in the quiet of the twilight and hear the soft phrases of that ancient Scottish melody again in my mind and picture the scene of that group of men singing a dog to eternity and comforting themselves in the timeless ritual of shared sorrow and the understanding of loss.

In the last light, I slung my two geese over my shoulder and started back to where I’d left the car. I found myself softly singing what I could remember of One’s funeral song, and surprisingly, I wasn’t as saddened by the idea as you’d imagine. The saving thought was one of remembrance; as long as a man lives, so will his dogs in one form or another. . . in a story or in a song. One will always be there to take care of the other and I can’t think of a nicer way to put it than we will “share a cup of kindness now. . .”
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Thanks for sharing that! I love his work. and having just lost my old gun dog a week ago, I did not get through it without a tear in my eye.
Great writing.

No matter how many times I read it, I still get a lump in my throat and tears I'm my eyes. Thank you for posting.

That is just what I needed today.

A story to re-read again and again.

Thanks

I've said it before..,I miss Gene Hill and all of my old bird dogs... Gene was very good..!!

Thank you for sharing this. Another one for us old people and our old bird dogs that I recommend is "The Road to Tinkhamtown" by Corey Ford.

quote:

Originally posted by crf:
Thank you for sharing this. Another one for us old people and our old bird dogs that I recommend is "The Road to Tinkhamtown" by Corey Ford.

That is one of my favorite stories. It reminds me of my grandfather. He is 82 years old and was never an owner of a bird dog but he has the kind of heart that would have went well with any dog.

I have a three month old springer named Zeke. He has a temperment that tells me that he will never be a great gun dog. Even so, I have no doubt that he will make me look better than I could ever be.

It is one of God's ironies that we will most assuredly outlive our dogs.

'One' was tauted as one of the 2 best dog stories ever written. 'The Road to Tinkhamtown' was the other. I searched and found both. I wholeheartedly agree. They have become my 2 favorites !

Gene Hill was fantastic .
If you like labs tales read Walt Hamptons writings too .

Steve Smith has been reprinting some of
Gene Hill's articles in Retriever Journal

Gene was magic with words. Great story! I remember the very sad day when Gene died.