|
|
This is a meritocracy. We are rewarded for our greater contributions; promoted according to our competencies; awarded for outstanding productivity; demoted for our poor performance; demerited for our negative influence; punished according to the seriousness of our transgressions.
The third Saturday of September is the hunting opener for ruffed grouse, and it begins the season of one of my favorite hobbies. Partridge hunting allows me to be in the woods, on my feet, moving through changing ecosystems, in the cooling air and mists or dryness and sun and winds of changed season.
Peppy, my seven-and-a-half-year-old female golden retriever, is not invited. She has lost the privilege of partridge hunting with us. She’s not a bird dog; she’s a trail dog. She doesn’t work to find and flush. And even when I shoot birds, she doesn’t retrieve them for me. She’s distracted by chipmunks and red squirrels at the wrong times.
What is expected of me each September is to clean the guns and requisition the ammo. To put in working order electronic collars and blow out dog whistles and launder orange vests. To get Foxy and Daphne to habitat. And to bring down the birds they flush. They, to their credit, find and flush, then retrieve according to expectations.
Peppy might not be invited to hunt partridge because she doesn’t retrieve them, but she is always at James side when he’s not hunting or working and makes great company for him. Photo courtesy of James Egan
I reward not with treats or biscuits, but with words of praise and physical affection. I’m usually ecstatic by the time the dead grouse is in my hand because Foxy’s retrieves are circuitous, and Daphne’s retrieves are often stop and go. I’m happy with simple victories. If I held myself to a higher standard, I might hold my two girls to higher standards. I don’t, so it wouldn’t be fair.
Things might be different for me with different expectations regarding productivity. I performed well through high school without much effort. How is that fair? At university I competed less well; did not stand out. That was a thresher that weeded me out eventually. Let’s say that a job, any job, had ten discreet tasks that it required. I think I can usually do six or seven of them very well, and a couple poorly. I’m not sure how I would survive in a true meritocracy. Maybe this is my result: working at a local hardware store, writing a column for a small-town newspaper, hunting ruffed grouse behind dogs, hunting ducks over decoys, stalking the white-tailed deer, paddling a canoe upstream through the rice paddies.
Yes, maybe I have merited well. Maybe this is a meritocracy. Probably it’s not. Probably I’m just lucky.
In the duck boat I do not impose a meritocracy. Peppy gets the bow, and it’s her and I, even though she still always refuses to retrieve ducks. I’m not sure if it’s the wet feathers, or duck taste or what, she has never retrieved a duck, or coot, or a merganser. Any dead bird. A ball, yes. Sticks, yes. Rocks? Maybe. Any number of things other than what she was bred, born and trained to.
It’s okay because she contributes other ways, or another way: just being company for me.
Leave a Reply