Daphne is a year old now. She is a true bird dog, I think. She is an English cocker spaniel from Schaller’s English Cockers down beyond Chippewa Falls. Where they grow bird dogs. Where they grow pheasant dogs. Flushers.
Today we were in downtown Duluth along Michigan Avenue which turns into Bob Dylan Way. I drive us up to the top of the parking ramp where it is open to the world like a rooftop. Like in the movie “Fargo,” except today it was blue sky and bright sun. The roof of the parking garage afforded Daphne a minute or two off-leash, running and sniffing parked cars and dirty snow. As my father would say, “stretching her legs” or “getting the stink off of oneself.”
Then we went into the stairwell going down. Stairs are still strange to Daphne, strange like concrete and rails and levels. It wasn’t easy going down with a dog trained to heel on the right. She’s my fourth dog and she is to heel on the right. Peppy the golden retriever heels on the left. Lucy the yellow lab (who died) heeled on the right. Foxy, replacing Lucy, heels on the right, and now Daphne is on the right too.
Daphne
Both Daphne and I take in the strange city smell of perpetually wet indoor concrete. Something else is in the air for her: homeless people and cigarettes.
We come out at Duluth’s downtown transportation center into the frigid air again and Daphne stops fast. Pigeons.
One lands on the sidewalk near us not 20 feet away, and Daphne freezes, staring at it. The pigeon does the pigeon walk on pigeon feet, gradually coming closer. Now Daphne is all tension, leaning just inside the leash.
“Whoa…” I say. She is not a pointer. She is a flusher. But I cannot release the leash to allow her to spring the pigeon, not in downtown Duluth, not on Michigan Avenue.
Our light turns, so I say, “Come around,” and lead her across Michigan. We are hunters, and it always hurts us not to hunt.
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