What A Dog Understands

You can learn a lot about a person at the tailgate. When you first shake hands, there is little information in the exchange. Maybe you hear what the person tells everyone about themselves. Before I met The Colonel, his friend told me that he was “a real retired Army colonel.”

Even though I don’t know a lot about the military, I would not have mistaken The Colonel for a fried chicken franchiser or as someone bestowed with the honorary title but without command responsibilities.

It was clear from his posture and reserved manner that he did not believe events as they are shown in the news. What I might imagine of war – hellfire with hurtling chunks of hot metal raining down – he might describe as a “tense moment.” You could see years of military training pressed into his clothes, packed into his resolve.

He was sure to be the last in line behind the rest of our group – there were five of us and three bird dogs – two setters and a Brittany. At the end of a long day covering fields in South Dakota, we arrived back at our vehicles, and the tailgates came down. The friend who introduced us all to each other opened his cooler and offered us a choice of beverages.

I watched as two of our new friends drank and wiped their mouths. The Brittany ducked under the shade of the vehicle, and one of the setters sat panting while his human began to eat a sandwich.

The Colonel had not taken a drink. He helped his old setter, Beatrice, into the back seat of his car, parked under a shade tree. He gave her a drink of cold water in a dish, and while she drank, he brought out what looked like a Dopp kit – a small leather travel kit that carried dog grooming supplies.

He methodically checked Beatrice’s paws and combed her fur, removing burrs, sticks, and tangles. It wasn’t until she rested her head that he moved to the back of his vehicle and attended to his shotgun, a side-by-side.

He takes care of his dog first, I thought. People often say the dog comes first and I knew it, too, but sometimes you don’t really know until you see a fine example, and you think, I want to be that guy.

Back home, I kept a comb and scissors in the glove box, but I didn’t have The Colonel’s style. I knew I would always like him after I saw how he took care of Beatrice, no matter what else. That’s how I feel about people – a single act can charm me so completely that it has my loyalty in the face of many minor flaws that I can easily overlook later.

This is how I have gotten to know myself over the years. I try to pay attention to what I admire most in others. I don’t always do a good job of replicating it – I do silly things like buy a dapper leather kit, fill it with supplies, and then forget to take it with me.

There’s a line in the movie Black Hawk Down in which Hoot says, “When I go home people’ll ask me, ‘Hey Hoot, why do you do it man?’… They won’t understand why we do it. They won’t understand that it’s about the men next to you, and that’s it. That’s all it is.”

I loved that line, and I thought, I sure want to be that guy. Then, I realized, as much as I want to be that guy, what I probably want more is to be the guy next to that guy. Either way, I want to show up for someone and stay by their side, no matter how difficult the moment becomes.

Last night, I sat on the floor with Cogswell. He’s 11 years old now, and he has always been the slowest of our setters. He has always been a “good boy.” He is not the best hunter, or the best runner, or the best at figuring out what the words you are saying mean. He’s just good. He tries to be good all the time.

And he likes me to sit down with him and scratch his ears. He presses his forehead into my chest, and I feel his head and shoulders and legs. Cogsy has more lumps than any of our dogs – they are benign lumps. He has had seven of them removed, and it seems as soon as he has a few removed, more start growing.

Affectionately, we sometimes call him Lumpy. Or Grandpa Cogsy – even when he was young. I tell people that our house has become like a nursing home for old dogs – we now have five dogs over the age of 11.

As I sat on the floor with Cogswell, I thought of our years together and how honored I was to have him still by my side. I remember him as a puppy lying next to my head in the sleeping bag in the back of the truck. I remember when he ran after some geese and looked ashamed of himself when Steve brought him back by his collar. He bucked around until he caught himself and seemed to realize that’s not how he wished to behave. He never chased geese again.

Earlier in the day, he sat on the porch watching the feral rabbits in the yard. Two rabbits ate grass just a few feet away from him. He’s the only one of the dogs we can trust to sit and watch the rabbits with us. It took all our years together to have the moments we have now.

I am not sorry that we can’t go as high or as far into the mountains anymore. Our reason for being was never about summiting a mountain or getting a limit of birds. It was about being there, and being there with each other, for each other, and those chances don’t stop when the scenery changes from the alpine to the recliner.

You can learn a lot about a person by the way they treat their dog. You can learn even more by the way they treat their older dog. And maybe what you learn is what you want to be yourself.

I don’t just want the memory or the credit for what I’ve done. I want as many chances as I can get to feel true love despite the circumstances. I won’t always make it. Sometimes I need someone else to help me figure it out, to be an example, to remind me, to carry me back.

Sometimes it’s a dog. Sometimes it’s Steve. And sometimes it’s a real retired Army colonel.

Cogswell and Annabelle the rabbit (Scooter in background)