The Dog Who Wouldn't Be

by Farley Mowat

  For once in his life Mutt was delighted to rise before the sun. When Mrs. Sazalisky opened the door at 4 a.m. to get some poplar billets with which to cook our breakfast, Mutt staggered from the room moaning audibly. He had not yet fully recovered an hour later when Paul guided us down to the soggy shores of the lake and out along a low mud spit.

  At the tip of the spit Paul had previously dug two foxholes for us. There was water in the holes, and it was ice-encrusted. The mud was stiff and frigid. There was a nasty wind out of the northwest and, although it was still too dark to see, we could feel the sharp bite of driven snow in our faces.

  Paul left us after a murmured injunction to keep an eye out for flocks coming from behind, and we three settled down to wait the dawn.

  In retrospect I cannot recall ever having been so cold. Not even the excitement of waiting for my first shot at a goose could keep the blood flowing to my numb extremities. As for Mutt, he was soon beyond all feeling. We had found a sack for him to lie on, but it did him little good. He began to shiver extravagantly, and then to snuffle, and finally his teeth began to chatter. Father and I were surprised by this, for neither of us had ever heard a dog’s teeth chatter before. We had not thought that such a thing was possible. Nevertheless, all through that interminable wait Mutt’s teeth rang like a cascade of gravel. He was so cold that he no longer even complained, and we recognized this as a bad sign, for when Mutt could not complain he was near the last extremity.

  The dawn, when it came at last, was gray and somber. The sky lightened so imperceptibly that we could hardly detect the coming of the morning. Father and I strained our eyes over the wind-driven water and then, suddenly, we heard the sound of wings. Cold was forgotten. We crouched in the flooded holes and flexed our numb fingers in their shooting gloves.

  Father saw them first. He nudged me sharply and I half turned my head to behold a spectacle of incomparable grandeur. Out of the gray storm scud, like ghostly ships, a hundred whistling swans drove down upon us on their heavy wings. They passed directly overhead, not half a gunshot from us, and we were lost beyond time and space in a moment of unparalleled majesty and mystery. Then they were gone, and the snow eddies once again obscured our straining vision.

  It would not have mattered greatly after that if we had seen no other living thing all day, nor fired a single shot. But the swans were only the leaders of a multitude. The windy silence of the mud spit was soon pierced by the sonorous cries of seemingly endless flocks of geese that drifted wraithlike overhead. They were flying low that day, so we could see them clearly. Snow geese, startlingly white of breast, with jet-black wing tips, beat past the point, and small bands of waveys kept formation with them like outriders. The honkers came close behind, and as the rush of air through their great pinions sounded harsh above the wind, Father and I stood up and raised our guns. A flight came low directly over us, and we fired as one. The sound of the shots seemed puny, and was lost at once in that immensity of wind and water.

  It was pure mischance that one of the birds was hit, for, as we admitted to each other later, neither of us had really aimed at those magnificent gray presences. Nevertheless, one of them fell, appearing gigantic and primeval in the tenuous light as it spiraled sharply down. It struck the water a hundred yards from shore and we saw with dismay that it had only been winged, for it swam off at once, with neck outthrust, after the vanishing flock.

  We ran to the shore, and we were frantic. It was not entirely the prospect of losing the goose that distracted us; rather it was the knowledge that we could not leave that great bird to perish slowly amidst the gathering ice. We had no boat. Paul had promised to return after dawn with a little dugout; but there was no sign of him, and the goose was now swimming strongly toward the outer limit of our vision.

  We had quite forgotten Mutt. We were astounded when he suddenly appeared beside us, cast one brief glance at the disappearing bird, and leaped into the bitter waters.

  To this day I have no idea what prompted him. Perhaps it was because the goose, being very large, seemed more worthy of his efforts than any duck had ever been. Perhaps he was simply so cold and miserable that the death wish was on him. But I do not really believe either of these explanations. I think my mother was right, and that from somewhere in his inscrutable ancestry a memory had at long last come to life.

  The snow flurries had grown heavier and Mutt and the goose soon vanished from our view. We waited through interminable minutes, and when he did not reappear we began to be frightened for him. We called, but if he heard us down the wind, he did not respond. At length Father ran off down the mud spit to seek Paul and the boat, leaving me alone with a growing certainty that I had seen my dog for the last time.

  The relief was almost overwhelming when, some minutes later, I caught a glimpse of Mutt returning out of the lowering scud. He was swimming hard, but the wind and seas were against him and it was some time before I could see him clearly. He had the goose firmly by one wing, but the honker was fighting fiercely. It seemed inconceivable that Mutt could succeed in bringing it to shore and I was convinced that he would drown before my very eyes. Many times he was driven completely under water, yet each time, when he emerged, his grip upon the goose remained unbroken. The goose buffeted him across the face with its uninjured wing; it jumped on his head; it attempted to fly; it attempted to dive; yet Mutt held on.

  When he was still twenty feet from shore I could bear the strain no longer and I waded out into the shallows until I was hip-deep. Mutt saw me and turned my way. When he came within reach I grabbed the goose from him and promptly discovered that it was as formidable as it appeared to be. It was all I could do to haul it ashore, and I suffered a buffeting in the process that left my legs and arms bruised for many a day.

  Paul and Father arrived in the little boat a short time later. They hurried ashore and Paul stood looking down at Mutt, who was now swathed in my hunting coat. I was sitting on the goose, and barely managing to keep it under control.

  “By God!” Paul said, and there was awe in his voice. “By God! You shoot the big gray goose! And dat dam’ dog – he bring him back? By God! I don’t believe!”

  Mutt wriggled under the coat and one eye opened. Life was returning; for if there was one thing that could stir him from the edge of the grave itself, it was honest praise. He must have recognized Paul’s incredulity as the highest praise indeed.

  We carried him back to the cabin and when Mrs. Sazalisky heard the story, she gave him a hero’s welcome. He was placed beside the red-hot stove and fed enormous quantities of steaming goulash. Only when he had begun to burp uncontrollably from the combination of too much heat and too much food, did his hostess desist from filling up his plate.

  We all made much of him, both then and later when we returned home. Never before had Mutt received such adulation, and he found it good. We could not anticipate it at the time, but when the hunting season rolled around a year later, we were to discover that cows, gophers, and even cats (during the shooting season at least) had been erased forever from his list of loves.

  Once Mutt had made up his mind to be a bird dog, there was no further question of his being “trained.”

  Nothing could have been more superfluous than the attempt. If any training was done at all, then it was Father and I who were the trainees. For Mutt soon displayed an incredible array of hidden talents. And if he was completely unorthodox, he was indisputably brilliant in his new career.

  The nature of this new Mutt became apparent on opening day of the duck season in the following year.

  By coincidence we had returned once more to the slough where Mutt had disgraced himself on his first hunting expedition. That slough, still nameless then, is now renowned to sportsmen throughout the west as Mallard-Pool-Mutt, and this is the tale of how it got its name.

  We did not sleep out on this occasion, but drove direct from home, arriving just in time to hurry into the blind before day broke. We had Mutt on a leash, for his exploit at Middle Lake h
ad not completely erased our memory of the debacle which had resulted from his first visit to the slough. We had hopes that he would redeem himself this time – but we were cautious. We even considered the advisability of muzzling him so that he would not scream the ducks away again; but this ignominy would have been too much for him to bear, and so we risked his voice.

  It was a different dawn, and yet the same as that which we had seen two years before. Once more the red glare of the morning sun fell on the immaculate mirror of the pond; and once more there was a pair of ducks – pintails this time – sleepily dabbling among the long reeds by the shore. The same pungent odor of salt and muck – an odor that is tasted rather than smelled – rose to us on the edgings of gray mist along the borders of the slough. And the same taut expectation lay upon us as we waited for the morning flight.

  The flight, too, came as it had done before, and as it had probably done since this slough was born. Out of the northern sky, half lit now, the sound of its approach was like a rush of wind.

  We crouched lower in the blind and my grip tightened warningly on Mutt’s collar. Once more I felt him tremble under my hand, and I was vaguely aware that he was making odd little whimpering cries deep in his throat. But my attention was on the approaching flocks.

  They came in with a great “whoosh” as the leaders thrust out their feet and struck and shattered the calm surface of the pool. They came in such numbers that it seemed the slough would be too small to hold them all – and still they came.

  There was no premature fusillade this time. Father and I were no longer tyros – and Mutt was securely tethered. We stood up together and the crash of the guns echoed like the hint of distant thunder amidst a swirling hurricane of stiff and frantic wings. It was all over in less than a minute. The sky was clear above us and the silence had returned. Out on the slough eight ducks remained, and five of them were greenhead drakes.

  Mutt was almost tearing the leash from my hands as we left the blind. “Let him go,” my father said. “He can’t do any harm now. Let’s see what he makes of this.”

  I slipped the leash. Mutt went through the band of muck and sedge at the water’s edge like a kangaroo, in great ungainly leaps. The last jump took him well into deep water, and he began churning forward like an old-fashioned stern-wheeler. There was a wild, almost mad glint in his eyes and he had the look of impetuous resolution about him that belongs naturally to a charging buffalo.

  Father and I stared at each other, and then at Mutt, in dumb amaze. But when we saw him reach the first dead duck, snap his teeth fast in a wing tip, and start for shore with it, we knew that we had found us a retrieving dog.

  What Mutt had done up to this point was, of course, no more than any good bird dog would have done. But the events that followed unmistakably presaged the flowering of his unique genius.

  The signs were blurred at first, for though he brought the first dead duck to shore all right, he made no attempt to deliver it properly into our hands. He simply dropped it on the verge and turned at once to make the next retrieve.

  However, as long as he brought the ducks to land, we saw no reason to complain – at least we saw no reason until he had retrieved the three dead ducks and had begun work on the remaining five, all of which were still quite active.

  Then he began to have difficulties. It took him several minutes to swim-down the first cripple, but eventually he managed to catch it by a wing tip and drag it to the shore. He deposited it unceremoniously, and at once leaped back into the water. Hard on his heels, the duck followed suit. Mutt did not notice, for his attention was already fixed on another duck in mid-pond.

  It was a large slough, and very soft and treacherous near the edge. Try as we might, neither Father nor I could manage to be on hand when Mutt brought the cripples in. Neither could we put the wounded birds out of their pain, as we should have liked to do, since we were not able to get within gunshot of them. It was all up to Mutt.

  By the time he had retrieved fifteen out of the original eight ducks, he was beginning to grow annoyed. His first fresh enthusiasm was wearing thin, but his brain was beginning to function. The next duck he brought ashore followed the routine already established by it and its fellows and, as soon as Mutt’s back was turned, waddled into the pond. This time Mutt kept a wary eye cocked over his shoulder, and he saw that he was being had.

  Father and I were at the far end of the pond, and we watched to see how he would react now that he knew the worst. Treading water in mid-pond, he turned and stared at us with a look of mingled scorn and disgust, as if to say: “What on earth’s the matter with you? You’ve got legs, haven’t you? Expect me to do all the work?”

  The situation suddenly struck us as being vastly amusing, and we began to laugh. Mutt never could stand being laughed at, though he enjoyed being laughed with; and he turned his back and began to swim to the far end of the pond. We thought for a moment he had abandoned the ducks and was about to take himself off. We were wrong.

  With not so much as another glance in our direction, he swam to the far side of the slough, turned about, and painstakingly began to herd all the crippled ducks toward our end of the pond.

  When all of them, save one old greenhead which skillfully evaded the roundup by diving, were within easy shotgun range of our position, Mutt turned and swam nonchalantly away again.

  We did our duty, but with a strong feeling of unreality upon us. “Do you think he did that on purpose?” Father asked me in awe-struck tones.

  Mutt had now gone back for the remaining mallard. This one was a magnificent drake, perhaps the leader of the flight, and he was cunning with his years. His injury must have been slight, for it was all Mutt could do to close the gap between them. And then, when Mutt was near enough to lunge, his teeth snapped shut on nothing but a mouthful of water. The drake had dived again.

  We watched as, three times, the drake evaded capture in this manner, leaving Mutt to swim in aimless circles on the surface.

  The old bird chose his water, and stayed well away from shore, for he knew about guns. We concluded finally that this was one duck we would not get, and we decided to call Mutt in.

  He was growing very weary. As his coat became increasingly water-logged he swam lower and lower, and his speed diminished to the point where he could just manage to overhaul the drake, and that was all. Nevertheless, he ignored us when we called to him, gently at first, and then in commanding tones. We began to be afraid that, in this willful obstinacy, he would drown himself. Father had already begun to strip off his hunting jacket and boots, ready to effect a rescue, when the incredible thing happened.

  Mutt had closed with his quarry for the fifth time. The duck waited, and at the last instant again upended and disappeared.

  This time Mutt also disappeared.

  A swirl of muddy water marked his passing, and in the center of the swirl there was a whitish blob that twisted back and forth lethargically. I recognized it as the tip of Mutt’s tail, held aloft by the remaining buoyancy in his long feathers.

  Father was already wading through the muck when my startled yell halted him. Together we stood and stared, and could not credit the reality of what we saw.

  Mutt had reappeared. Weed festooned his face, and his eyes were bulging horribly. He gasped for breath and floundered heavily. But between his front teeth was the tip of the drake’s wing.

  When at last Mutt lay before us, panting and half drowned, we were a humbled and penitent man and boy. I rolled the leash up in my hand and, catching Father’s glance, I turned and threw it with all my strength far out into the slough.

  It sank with hardly a ripple into the still depths of Mallard-Pool-Mutt.

  6

  MUTT MAKES HIS

  MARK

  nce Mutt had fully dedicated himself as a retriever, our hunting expeditions became pure joy, unadulterated by the confusion and chaos which were so much a part of our life in the city. I looked forward hungrily to the days when the brazen harvest would be made, a
nd the fields lie cropped and crisp beneath our boots; the days when the poplar leaves would spin to earth, and the frost would harden the saline muck about the little sloughs; the days when dawn would come like a crystalline shock out of a sky that held no clouds, save those vital ones that were the flocks pursuing their long way south.

  Yet if I looked forward with a consuming eagerness to those days, then Mutt’s anticipation far surpassed mine. Having found a purpose in his life, he became so avid for the hunt that in the final weeks before the season opened he would become impervious to all ordinary temptations. Cats could wander at will across his own lawn, not a dozen feet from his twitching nose, and he would not even see them. The honeyed breeze from the house next door, where a lovely little cocker bitch yearned in lonely isolation, had no power to wake him from his dreams. He lay on the browning lawn beside the garage and did not take his eyes from the doors through which Eardlie would soon emerge to carry him, and us, into the living plains.

  Each season he went absolutely mad on the first day, and each season when he retrieved his first bird, he brought back a badly mangled corpse. But that never happened twice in a given year. And after that first outburst he would steady to his job.

  There seemed to be no limits to his capacity for self-improvement as a hunting dog. Each season he devised new refinements designed to bring him nearer to perfection; and some of these were more than passing strange.

  One Wednesday in early October we introduced a friend from Ontario to prairie hunting. He owned a whole kennel of purebred setters, and he had hunted upland birds in the east for thirty years. He was a man who could seldom be surprised by the sagacity of dogs. Yet Mutt surprised and even startled him.

  Although he was clearly taken aback by Mutt’s appearance, our friend refrained from casting any doubts upon the glowing character which we gave our dog, and as a result of this act of faith he and Mutt got on well from the outset of their acquaintance. On the Wednesday of which I write, the two of them went off together around one side of a large poplar bluff, while Father and I went around the other side. Our mutual objective was a covey of Hungarian partridges which we knew to be lurking somewhere near at hand.