Have to say goodbye to my 1st dog TD tonight. As much energy as he has in the story he has been blind for a few years and got along fine. We made the decision because he has stopped eating, drinking and lost most of his hearing. Have also put $3000 dollars into a new hip, but that has also gave out on him. He has been at my parents farm the last few years because of the room they have at the farm and the fact he loves it out there.
Here is a story from way back in 2006 on nodakoutdoors when I used to post alot more.
As another Phesant season in Nodak comes to a close, I will remeber this one as my 1st with my lab T.D. ( don't say it to fast or it sounds like the reason all men want to watch the girls gone wild videos).
Looking back it was a year of 1sts for me. I got T.D. despite my better judgement and the judgements of many others. Including a girlfriend that now knows i am not the smelliest man in our house. I had always had dogs on the farm growing up, but i actually was probably what you would call a cat person. Now before you question my sexual preference, I want you to know that I was an all-conference offensive-linemen in college and can go days without showering if needed. I went the cheap route i bought the cheapest lab i could find, free! I brought him home and he proceded to crap on my carpet (i rent) so this was a concern of mine.
Once we finally got that potty taining thing outta the way , I proceded to try to tame the beast. Again despite my better judgement and never having trained a dog before, i thought i knew better than those idiots in books such as; gun dog and water dog and also those inexpierenced nitwits in the 20 or so videos i purchased. I mean how hard can it be? I first tried to leash train T.D. he didn't like that. I thought to myself, self? How do i leash train a dog when all he wants to do is eat and chase anything that comes across his path? (True story) I proceded to put a piece of hotdog on the end of a stick and have my girlfriend lead T.D. around while following the hotdog. Now if you have never seen this sight before and want to make a fool out of yourself i suggest you try this exact method of leash training your puppy.
Next came fetch. T.D. took to this instantly which was a nice break from the hotdog fiasco. One problem though, he would go get the throw dummy and drop it in the vicinity of anywhere from 100 to 200 yard aways from me. Now if i was up to running after wounded phesants in the fall i bet this would be good enough, but no i am pretty lazy and did not want to turn phesant hunting into the Boston Marathon, so I went out on a limb and gave him a treat when he would bring me the dummy and lo and behold it worked!
The next thing i thought i would try is the actual hunting part. TD and i would go for walks through some of the best phesant country i know....actually we walked around the trees of the local softball field. This presented another problem, wooden poles. Now you may not think this would be a problems for dogs, but let my tell you a young black lab hitting a wooden pole at full speed makes a pretty horrible sound. While i thinking whether or not to enroll my dog in to Special Ed. classes that would teach him how to avoid wooden poles, i had another idea, teach him to stop and stay!! By gosh it worked! He has not hit a pole for 6 months!
Skipping ahead a few months TD and i went out for our 1st hunt. Opening day of grouse season. It was 70 degrees and i had a hyper dog, it does not mix. I wondered why this dog, who i had witnessed run anywhere from 2-5 miles in an all out sprint did not want to hunt grouse? So i went home and the dog (by this time i was not calling him TD it was either the dog or god damit you stupid *%^&!, how he learned him name i will never know) drank roughly a gallon of water. I thought hmmm he must be a bit dehydrated.
Well as fall went along and temps dropped TD and I were getting along pretty well with this hunting thing until a weekend in late october. I was going to go do some hunting back at mom and dad's farm, but i decided to sneak in a quick hunt before i left for the weekend. The dog and i found a slough that looked birdy and proceded to walk it. Big mistake, there we no birds in the slough but we did find one ticked off porcupine. Now this was not TD's 1st expierence with something other than a phesant. A few weeks earlier we were in a slough, i thought he had the bird corned and i told him to get em. TD jumped on the catails and all i could hear was a growl and a yelp. All i saw on the way out of that slough( I was running as fast a 300lb guy can go) was a little black streak go by me in the passing lane. Anyway, back to porcupine. TD came out of that slough looking like he tried to lick a pin coushin, it was not pretty. I took him to the vet who pulled all of the quills out despite TD's trying his darndest to keep them in his mouth.
This was not the end of the weekend. TD seemed well enough to travel, so He and i went home to test our luck. Well being a young dog that did not have many hunting years under his belt, he decided the cows in the pasture were more interesting than the phesants in the shelterbelt. TD learned an important lesson that day, there is a reason why we do not have free range cattle in southeast north dakota the greatest advecary keeping dogs from ruling all cows, electric fences! after consoling TD and cursing the cows that were pointing and laughing we ended up getting our 1st limit together, despite TD's best effort to process our quary in his mouth.
To make a a long story a little less longer, today was our last day to hunt this year and i ended the year like i started it. Missing a rooster at 10 yds and blaming the dog for not knocking it on the head and handing it to me.
I learned many things in my year of firsts: 1. Dog farts smell worse than the worst human farts, 2. when a dog in your house barks a 3am listen to him (another story altogether), 3. If you are running a dog, unless you like the smell of poop, slow you vehicle down on a windy day, and give him a chance to go to the bathroom and finally, 3. If you not a dog person, but love to hunt, get one you will never go without one again.
I have way to much time on my hands.
Here is a story from way back in 2006 on nodakoutdoors when I used to post alot more.
As another Phesant season in Nodak comes to a close, I will remeber this one as my 1st with my lab T.D. ( don't say it to fast or it sounds like the reason all men want to watch the girls gone wild videos).
Looking back it was a year of 1sts for me. I got T.D. despite my better judgement and the judgements of many others. Including a girlfriend that now knows i am not the smelliest man in our house. I had always had dogs on the farm growing up, but i actually was probably what you would call a cat person. Now before you question my sexual preference, I want you to know that I was an all-conference offensive-linemen in college and can go days without showering if needed. I went the cheap route i bought the cheapest lab i could find, free! I brought him home and he proceded to crap on my carpet (i rent) so this was a concern of mine.
Once we finally got that potty taining thing outta the way , I proceded to try to tame the beast. Again despite my better judgement and never having trained a dog before, i thought i knew better than those idiots in books such as; gun dog and water dog and also those inexpierenced nitwits in the 20 or so videos i purchased. I mean how hard can it be? I first tried to leash train T.D. he didn't like that. I thought to myself, self? How do i leash train a dog when all he wants to do is eat and chase anything that comes across his path? (True story) I proceded to put a piece of hotdog on the end of a stick and have my girlfriend lead T.D. around while following the hotdog. Now if you have never seen this sight before and want to make a fool out of yourself i suggest you try this exact method of leash training your puppy.
Next came fetch. T.D. took to this instantly which was a nice break from the hotdog fiasco. One problem though, he would go get the throw dummy and drop it in the vicinity of anywhere from 100 to 200 yard aways from me. Now if i was up to running after wounded phesants in the fall i bet this would be good enough, but no i am pretty lazy and did not want to turn phesant hunting into the Boston Marathon, so I went out on a limb and gave him a treat when he would bring me the dummy and lo and behold it worked!
The next thing i thought i would try is the actual hunting part. TD and i would go for walks through some of the best phesant country i know....actually we walked around the trees of the local softball field. This presented another problem, wooden poles. Now you may not think this would be a problems for dogs, but let my tell you a young black lab hitting a wooden pole at full speed makes a pretty horrible sound. While i thinking whether or not to enroll my dog in to Special Ed. classes that would teach him how to avoid wooden poles, i had another idea, teach him to stop and stay!! By gosh it worked! He has not hit a pole for 6 months!
Skipping ahead a few months TD and i went out for our 1st hunt. Opening day of grouse season. It was 70 degrees and i had a hyper dog, it does not mix. I wondered why this dog, who i had witnessed run anywhere from 2-5 miles in an all out sprint did not want to hunt grouse? So i went home and the dog (by this time i was not calling him TD it was either the dog or god damit you stupid *%^&!, how he learned him name i will never know) drank roughly a gallon of water. I thought hmmm he must be a bit dehydrated.
Well as fall went along and temps dropped TD and I were getting along pretty well with this hunting thing until a weekend in late october. I was going to go do some hunting back at mom and dad's farm, but i decided to sneak in a quick hunt before i left for the weekend. The dog and i found a slough that looked birdy and proceded to walk it. Big mistake, there we no birds in the slough but we did find one ticked off porcupine. Now this was not TD's 1st expierence with something other than a phesant. A few weeks earlier we were in a slough, i thought he had the bird corned and i told him to get em. TD jumped on the catails and all i could hear was a growl and a yelp. All i saw on the way out of that slough( I was running as fast a 300lb guy can go) was a little black streak go by me in the passing lane. Anyway, back to porcupine. TD came out of that slough looking like he tried to lick a pin coushin, it was not pretty. I took him to the vet who pulled all of the quills out despite TD's trying his darndest to keep them in his mouth.
This was not the end of the weekend. TD seemed well enough to travel, so He and i went home to test our luck. Well being a young dog that did not have many hunting years under his belt, he decided the cows in the pasture were more interesting than the phesants in the shelterbelt. TD learned an important lesson that day, there is a reason why we do not have free range cattle in southeast north dakota the greatest advecary keeping dogs from ruling all cows, electric fences! after consoling TD and cursing the cows that were pointing and laughing we ended up getting our 1st limit together, despite TD's best effort to process our quary in his mouth.
To make a a long story a little less longer, today was our last day to hunt this year and i ended the year like i started it. Missing a rooster at 10 yds and blaming the dog for not knocking it on the head and handing it to me.
I learned many things in my year of firsts: 1. Dog farts smell worse than the worst human farts, 2. when a dog in your house barks a 3am listen to him (another story altogether), 3. If you are running a dog, unless you like the smell of poop, slow you vehicle down on a windy day, and give him a chance to go to the bathroom and finally, 3. If you not a dog person, but love to hunt, get one you will never go without one again.
