The yodeling began at 1:19 AM. Before that, the song had been a low mournful moan, sort of a cross between a sad spiritual and the way the starter on my ancient Massey-Ferguson tractor grinds on cold December mornings.
Lying on my bed nearby, I said out loud to noone, “He can’t keep this up. He just aired out an hour ago.”
That’s precisely when my ten weeks old English setter named Deacon tuned up the yodel.
First it was a blues sort of riff, delta slow and low-down sorry that he was not biting my hand. Chewing on a work boot. Worrying the ears of the desperate old Labrador who looked at me with pleading eyes that kept asking, “Why?”
Then came the Slim Whitman impression, quicker, keener, louder, pissed off that he wasn’t tearing around the kitchen island in pursuit of nothing but puppy thrills, teasing the pit bull sulking in her crate, pausing to gaze longingly up at the biscuit box, aware for the first, but not last, time in his life that it would be good to be much, much taller and outfitted with opposable thumbs.
Finally, in full cry, The Deacon ran scales, rising, falling, swelling and fading as if Roy Rogers were yodeling Stevie Ray Vaughn’s Greatest Hits. For the first time in a long time, I was reminded that puppy crates in old farmhouses have amplification properties that defy science.
Pillow over my face in the Mute-Sound-or-Smother-Myself-and-Escape-This-Anguish Position, the crawl across my brain screen kept reading, “What the hell were you thinking, getting a puppy?”
Finally, blessedly, The Deacon lost steam. The yodeling dropped to grumbling. In moonlight from the bedroom window, I watched as he lay down in his crate, put his muzzle on those snowshoe paws, and immediately passed out.
On our way to do chores next morning, I danced the Puppy Two Step Stumble, choreography needed when the only place Deacon wants to be is underfoot. I watched him roar around the yard, his front legs and back legs working in only the merest suggestion of cooperation. Suddenly, he pounced on hoof trimmings the farrier had left from the week before. While the lanky pup was busy gnawing, I slipped away to release two lofts of homing pigeons. The Deacon bounced to his feet and watched the parti-colored flock slice tight gyres over the barnyard. Huh, he seemed to say. That’s kind of cool… before bellying out again with a choice white slice of hoof left from the roan mare.
Suddenly, like a creeping fever, the sheer weight of all that a puppy has to learn overtook me. Learning not to jump on folks, for example, or waiting, rather than barging, through doors. He’d hate the little collar I was carrying in my jeans pocket. It’d be at least a week of whining and scratching until the dopey pet shop skull and cross bones patterned thing could be borne. The Deacon would have to learn not to play in the bull’s lot, understand that even dog-friendly horses don’t like puppies to chomp a hank of tail hair and hang there swinging and growling, and realize that lurking about the quail pens was verboten.
The bird dog stuff is easy: "Come," "Heel," and "Whoa" (and their corollaries "Come here, dammit!" "Deacon, dammit, HEEL!" and "Whoa" accompanied by a deep growl). On our walks, I'll tote a bag of pigeons. Every time he comes around, I'll fly a bird off his bow. Eventually, he'll (A) learn that good things happen when he looks me up, and (B) no matter how fast he thinks he is, he can't catch a bird in flight (that's our story, and we're sticking to it).
Then there’s the transformation from utter heathen to bearable housemate. The Deacon was born and weaned in a clean, attentive home, one in which he never had to lie in a dirty whelping box, crate, or play area. So far, he’s made one mistake in four days, and that was my fault. He went to the door while I was distracted with some paperwork, waited a bit, and then simply peed on the linoleum on the very doorstep. That’s maybe not a win, but it’s certainly a moral victory, serving notice that he already understands that the bathroom is right through here The Spot, a well-marked section of yard favored by the rest of my dogs.
His food and water intake are measured and timed. Soon after he finishes a meal and whenever he wakes from a nap in his crate, he’s escorted to The Spot and told “Be quick.” Before long, “Be quick” will send him scurrying to find a place to clean out, a godsend for some future sub-zero night outside a South Dakota motel room when a pheasant hunting trip is hammered by a freak snowstorm.
The Deacon’s breeder, Lynn Dee Galey of Firelight Birddogs in Netawaka, Kansas, made a practice of calling to the litter of puppies as soon as they could trundle about. “Pup, pup, pup!” she’d trill, making soft mouth whistles as she coaxed the puppies into following her as she put out feed pans. Either cue brings The Deacon in on the run. He’s rewarded with praise, a pet, biscuit or food bowl every single time.
There’s a pay off on the command of “Kennel!” as well. Right now, I feed him in his crate. I put the bowl inside and as he dashes to it, I tell him, “Kennel” and ease the door closed after him. Between meals, when I need him to be confined, I fetch down a biscuit from the top of the refrigerator, get his attention, walk to the crate, toss in the treat, again cuing “Kennel” and closing the door when he’s safely inside. At this writing, it’s Day Four; when I move to the biscuit cache, he’s already juking, jiving, and whining. This morning, I’d not taken two steps toward the crate before he was already inside, waiting.
“Kennel,” I crowed. “Good boy, Deacon.” I latched the door and threw a salute to good breeders like my new friend Lynn Dee, savvy enough to help puppies learn how to learn.
Most of our "obedience training” is just The Deacon learning what passes for routine here on what a family member has described as “Rancho Delerious.” There are four other gun dogs who share these acres with me – Harper Lee, an Elhew strain English Pointer, Lucy, an old-blood Llewellin setter, and the two British-bred Labradors, Finn and Boots. The Deacon will find his place in the pecking order with carefully orchestrated introductions and play sessions with each one. Already, he and Boots are thick as thieves.
For a time, Deacon will be First Among Equals, not only because of the special needs of a weanling puppy, but because he requires extra time to understand that he is ours, and, in turn, we are his. The Deacon will bond with each of the other dogs in some fashion; he will bond with me as a lifetime boon companion.
There’s no pressure on the puppy. He will have the chance to learn and grow as a happy, confident part of life on this farm, life as part of our hunting team. The pressure is on me to establish the connection necessary to celebrate the considerable genetic inheritance of his sire, October Mountain Heath, and dam, Firelight Mustang Sally.
I trusted the October Setters’ reputation, but, of all the dogs I looked at from around the country, it was Mustang Sally I wanted. Without ever seeing her in person, I knew from studying pictures exactly how she would move, how she would go to her game. One of the photos was a head study; Sally’s eyes – deep, calm, intelligent – sealed the deal.
Of course I also staked my hopes on the proven acumen of October Setters’ Cliff and Lisa Weisse and Firelight’s Lynn Dee Galey as legit hunters and breeders. There are very few producers of the old-time grouse dogs George Ryman once bred up in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny region who log the numbers of days afield that the Wiesses and Galey do. Perhaps the most critical factor is that neither keeps a large kennel. They live with and hunt their bloodstock, proving their breeding over and over on wild game in the woods, on the grasslands, and in the mountains.
In short, Cliff, Lisa, and Lynn Dee hunt the birds I hunt in the manner I try to hunt them, with the kind of dog I love the most. Any English setter that meets their high standards would surely suit me.
Finally, there were Lynn Dee Galey’s Flint and Kate, full brother and sister to The Deacon from the first Heath/Mustang Sally litter in 2015. Both are athletic, talented dogs with drive, intensity on point, and refined good looks. Linebreeding, or, as in this case, a rematch between dogs whose bloodlines are very similar, is the closest we can come to hedging our bets in producing working gun dogs of a predictable, particular type and performance standard. Looking over Kate and Flint from the first Sally/Heath go ‘round, I felt moved to paraphrase that famous line from the film in which another Sally met a guy named Harry: “I’ll have what (Lynn Dee’s) having.”
So that’s the answer to the yodel-induced question, “What the hell was I thinking?” I was thinking that I have never, ever gotten over the sight of a hard-going, Allegheny-type English setter slipping through thick alder runs or skimming over the prairie, slamming into scent and holding tight with a fierceness that threatens to almost burst into flames. I have never gotten over a silky, sculpted setter head, wormed under my hand for a pet. I have never gotten over the thrill of watching a young dog figure out his world and a way of moving through it with style, grace, and swagger.
What the hell was I thinking? I was thinking that I wanted all of that all over again with The Deacon.