Successful Hunt = Happy Dog

For you non-hunters out there -- sorry about this! Skip to the next post on your blogroll.

But this is what our precious Bouie lives for -- to flush and retrieve and swim and retrieve and . . . retrieve and retrieve and retrieve. He carried one of the quail around the house forever that evening, showing it off to anyone who would look. That's a remarkable, innate characteristic of labs and other retrievers -- they love to carry things around gently in their mouths and show them off. Sometimes it can get a little annoying because they can get quite pushy in encouraging you to check it out, but they take such joy in their feat that you just have to look, smile, and praise.

These pics were taken a week ago, on a cold and rainy night in New Orleans. The intrepid hunters include Pepper, The Son, and our friend who was also Pepper's first aide de camp. They had just returned from a successful bird hunt and were cleaning the spoils on the front porch, assisted by their valiant retriever and a number of beerish substances.

While he's an experienced duck and goose hunter, Bouie had not been on a bird hunt before. The Son got a great video of him flushing (and nearly catching!) the pheasant, so it's understandable that Bouie would carefully supervise the cleaning operation in case the quarry tried to make good an escape.

We've already enjoyed a mess of quail (translation: a "mess" is a variable southern quantity, applicable to game birds, fish, and products of the garden alike), but it was Bouie who earned the pheasant egg. I fried it just until the yolk was runny and placed it atop his breakfast chow. There was no hesitating to eat on Bouie's part that morning!

Now I'm thinking pheasant for Easter dinner. Ah -- the bounty of this old Earth!

And the joy of a young black lab who has pleased his people -- nothing like it.