I took my 10-year old Vizsla out in the new snow today. He's blind in full daylight (but not in the dark!?) so I took his pheasant-scented throwing dummy to throw. He hears it land, usually, and that gives him a good start.
One fell out of hearing, though, and he headed out on his mission, running small then larger then really wide circles and arcs, then quartering in tighter and tighter as the breeze picked up and gave him some help. He found the dummy, of course, and pranced back with it. I had to call to him on each return, not a command but just a beacon of sound so he could know where I was. "Here I am," I'd say, then I'd have to scold him a little for chewing the dummy.
It's realistic, and he really has developed a habit of chewing up birds. I hunt with a 20-gauge, 2 3/4 shells, so the birds are sometimes still pretty lively when he gets them and I know he's been clawed. So I only scold him a little. He's a pointer, anyway, and if he just finds my downed bird I'm plenty happy to walk over and pick it up myself.
The beautiful thing today, that I've never gotten to see in all these years with him, was the tracks he left while searching for that long throw. I wandered over, just for curiosity, to see what kind of trail he left. His quartering runs left the most graceful, swooping, elongated figure-8s I've ever seen. Like infinity symbols, resting comfortably after jobs well done.
He's a wonderful companion in this human world, and a living perfection in his own hunting world. The Olympics are great because every four years you get to see the very best people do their very best thing as well as it can be done. The bird season is great because I can watch Vip do that every weekend. To discover, after all these years, another beautiful element of his life and work was a thrilling surprise.
