Editor’s note: The following was inspired by the “A dog’s life” blog post last week.
I have a black lab named Charlie and she is a great hunting and fishing dog.
Charlie comes from great retrieving stock and I worked hard on a daily basis to teach her the game.
She was about two when I was fishing the South Fork of the Badaxe River in the Driftless Area. I was fishing along riffle that ended in a deep corner that could sink a Chevy. A wind came up and blew my felt cowboy hat into the stream. As it bobbed along the long the riffle towards the deep pool, I mentally bid it farewell, since the hat would likely sink and be unrecoverable.
I looked up and saw Charlie intently focusing on the hat. On a whim, I yelled “fetch it.”
She bounded into the river, swam out, grabbed the hat and returned to me at heel. I still have that hat.
Now that’s a fishing dog.
— Jon Christiansen