Your dog would die for you. You would not do the same for him

-Quote from my good friend CB

I swore I’d never have another dog. Forget the bird dog, German Shorthaired Pointer thing. Just no dog. Not after Nikko. And that was almost twenty years ago. Even though every year the girls always asked for a puppy, I just couldn’t bring myself to it.

Nikko was my best friend.

We’d hunt quail all over the rapidly disappearing brush in Hidalgo County back in the early 1990’s when I was in college. We’d bum around in my little black Suzuki Samuri without a top, just Nikko and I looking for likely fields to shoot, sometimes overgrown ones over by Sugar Road in Pharr, or maybe way out Conway north of Mission, busting covey after covey.

My freezer was always full.

Once we went hunting north of the University on Hoen Road, a tumbleweed-grass field that just looked ripe for codorniz. We hunted and hunted that grey, cold afternoon, but no covey. Suddenly Nikko came on point, but just as quickly began jumping back and forth barking his still puppish yap….

That’s when I heard it.

The telltale dry buzzing of a big old rattlesnake.

My hair stood on end as I bolted forward just in time to see Nikko standing on rock solid point, the big old cascabel reared back ready to strike, head the size of a damn steam iron. I screamed at the top of my lungs “NIKKO!”. He jumped backward, trance broken, and I unleashed both barrels of my old side by side over his head, and into the snakes, which disintegrated into a fine mist of red.

Neither one of us wanted to hunt any more that day.

But there were many more days to come, and when I finally lost him (a whole ‘nother story), I swore I’d never have another dog.

Besides it’s kind of like having a family member that never grows up, and my own independence just wasn’t ready for the commitment of the whole thing.

Well, I don’t know what possessed me to do it, but about a month ago another little German Shorthaired pup found his way into our lives. We named him Assault, a play on words actually (Get it? Assault? A-Salt-y dog….)

When we went to pick him up in Edinburg, he rode home uncrated in the back of the Volvo. To show his newfound love for me, he immediately planted several Assault-bombs in my jacket behind the back seat.

Right now he’s asleep in the crate after a rather frustrating puppy morning out. Assault seemed more intent on pointing at cats and chasing the check cord than on whoa and dead. Happier rolling and sniffing the grass, chewing on palm fronds to sooth his cutting teeth than on heeling and fetching.

Sometimes they just have to be pups.

For the most part though he just wants to please, and training is coming along well. He points at the wing, responds reasonably well to commands and even came along duck hunting with us several days ago. The girls kept him tight leashed, but he perked up at the gunshots, and swam and splashed in the cold Laguna Madre waters, waiting for his master to knock down a couple of redheads.

There is joy mixed with sadness in my heart. Joy at the innocence of a new puppy, sadness over how short the time we get to enjoy them is. And I guess that’s true of all things. Besides, I watch my girls and this critter and wonder why I waited so long to let another gun dog into our collective lives. There is a bond that cannot be duplicated, and they deserve that too.

So for now, my little pup sleeps. Sometimes they just have to have puppy days.