Pure happiness

     This past Sunday I finally got my ol girl Duchess out for a duck hunt.  Starting around the first week in October she begins to sense that waterfowl season is upon us and she gets a little more excited each day!  Between house projects and work our opportunities to get out kept passing by but we finally kicked the season off, and it couldn't have come at a better time, Duch goes in for her eye surgery this Thursday!

     So we got up at the crack of 2:30, yes AM, and headed out to pick up our guide for the day, a buddy of ours who lives in Hayden.  Once we picked him up we drove another 1 1/2 hours north past Sandpoint, ID to the Kootenai national wildlife refuge.  This place is about 20 miles from Canada and serves as a hidden oasis for duck hunters!  According to the bird count on their website there were about 9600 birds there last week!

     Aside from the ample amount of birds to hunt with views like this surrounding you it's easy to justify the 2 hour drive!  We got into the birds fast and within the first hour had four mallards down.  Duchess once again made me proud as she went after each bird with the enthusiasm of a puppy, even though she's 11!

     I know she's not the perfect huntinndog in the world, but as I recently told another buddy of mine who has a lab of his own, the guy who says his dog is perfect probably doesn't hunt with them that often!  I am in firm belief that labs are like little kids when they go hunting and can only contain their excitement so long!  But Duchess imperfections are often followed by some of the most amazing retrieves I've ever seen!  Usually about the time she makes me angry for whining when I can't seem to hit anything, I sail a duck so far away I can hardly see it and she swims a half a mile faster than Micheal Phelps could then drops the bird at my feet and sits down ready to go again!  

     An when it's all said and done and were hiking back to the truck with a string of birds, she has the look in her eyes of pure happiness!  I've seen the same look every time we go hunting since the first time 10 years ago, and it never gets old.  When I see this look in her eyes I am reminded of the big picture and thankful that I have been blessed to be the man who has been allowed to provide these moments of happiness for Duchess!  She truly has been a good dog her entire life, Lord knows I out her through some rough patches in the beginning while I was trying to straighten myself out, but her loyalty has never waivered.  She has looked up to me with the same level of adoration from day one!  And as she gets older every year, and her body takes longer to recover from a hunt than her mind does, I am even more grateful of each outing we get to go on.  Each one bringing both of us to that place of pure happiness:)

Remember, it's the little moments in life that stick with us all forever!