Fruits of the hunt.....

Oh well, here we are in 2011 - it was a painless transition..... few things have changed: the weather's gone from fog to wet to freezing to snow and back to wet again and it's only the 5th! THE resolution is holding strong and The Boss didn't make any so he's ok too! All the animals are fine although we did lose the Old White Duck on New Year's Day. She was quite a feature of The Poultry Palace; considering she was a Cherry Valley Duck and only supposed to live for 7 weeks her 5 or 6 years was a pretty good innings (don't know why a cricket metaphor comes to mind just now...!) and she will be fondly remembered.

The Bestest Gundog in all The World and I have been out bush beating yesterday and today and, as I write, he is curled up by my feet trying to sleep. After any hunting day he finds it difficult to relax and unwind and today is no exception - he's constantly moving from one position to another trying to get comfortable but it just doesn't happen. Likely as not, once he does drop off to sleep he'll start dreaming of hunting and will be twitching and yipping; hopefully after that he'll finally relax and get a few hours of sleep.

This is one of our busier weeks with two consecutive days followed by a day off followed by another two consecutive days. Although the weather and terrain (not to mention the vagaries of the Keeper and the Guns) can make things challenging for we mortals, our canine companions have a far tougher time of it. We are only expected to walk. Spaniels in general, and The BGiatW in particular, do everything at breakneck speed: bashing through briar and brambles, struggling over/under/through every conceivable cover crop and woodland, charging up and down hill and - as today - plunging into freezing lakes - in order to flush and retrieve game. Goodness only knows how many miles they must cover, constantly following their instincts and training whilst contemporaneously paying attention to whistled commands. If they didn't love it, we'd never be able to make them do it!

The joy of working with and alongside an intelligent hunting dog is made all the more pleasurable by the unexpected results of his work. Some of the things we get to eat we would probably never otherwise have access to: for instance the game (comprising waterhen, woodcock, partridge and pheasant) and apple pie we had for dinner last night. It gives a whole new meaning to "locally sourced" and "home made" . If anyone had told me before Gunner arrived on the scene that I would one day think nothing of skinning and plucking and drawing I would have thought they were crazy! Now they would probably think I am!

But actually I think that maybe one of the best ways of thanking a working dog is to enjoy the fruits of his hunting..... so "Thank you Gunner and Pleasant Dreams........."