Miskimen Mel C. - Sit stay heal: how an underachieving Labrador won our hearts and brought us together

My father cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled, Blow. Your. Whistle!

Was I supposed to blow a short toot from the whistle made out of a deer antler that hung from a lanyard around my neck? Or a toot, to-ooot?

He was on the opposite side of a muddy pond. I stood on the other side and wondered if that tickling sensation coming from my leg was indeed a tick. I bent over to look and was immediately reprimanded. Pay attention to your dog!

My seven-year-old black Lab, Seamus, was swimming back toward me with a white rubber training dummy in his mouth. He was a high-octane kind of Lab in need of a regular outlet for his relentless retrieving urges that I had thought Id gotten a handle on. He had ample opportunitiesgetting the newspaper, bringing me my shoes, finding the errant dirty sock, and stealthily removing my just-washed-and-hung-on-the-line bedding from the laundry basket one piece at a time. But, judging by the way he longingly looked at the TV dogs on Animal Planet bounding into lakes, carrying dead ducks in their mouths, Id say I had been in denial.

I had no clue what to do with him. I didnt hunt. I really didnt care if my dog had what my father called a hard mouth, meaning he tended to chomp and chew on the thing he had stolen from my closet, nor did I care whether or not I had lived up to his expectations of what a pack leader should be. Seamus rolled his eyes at me whenever we were around other dogs, so expectations not met.

My father cupped his hands to his mouth again and repeated the command: Blow. Your. Whistle!

I put it in my mouth and gave it what I thought was a good, loud enough toot, so Seamus would hear it and somehow know what it meant. And what did it mean again? Come back? Turn? Stop? If I didnt know, how could I expect the dog to know? Umbecause dont dogs just know these things? Like how the car ride to the beach was different from the car ride to the vet?

Seamus was still on course. I was still worried about that alleged tick.

I loved the outdoors as much as my father didwell, maybe not that much. My definition of spending time outside with the dog involved sitting on the patio, sipping a smoothie while Seamus busied himself with a stick, gnawing it like I had done in third grade with my number-two pencil. Once the temperatures dropped to freezing, I preferred the comforts of a cabin with indoor plumbing rather than my fathers choice of a tent and a sleeping bag. And I liked to start my day in dry clothes and end the day in dry clothes and not have one side soaking wet from dog shake-off spray.

My father speaks fluent retriever. His dogs win trophies, ribbons, certificates. His current doga fourteen-year-old springer spaniel named Mugsy, now retiredreached the pinnacle of the dog-retrieving world and earned the title of Master Hunting Dog Excellent, which in the field-trial world is kind of a big deal. So, yeah. He knows his stuff. My father is also a retired cop. He commands. He takes charge. Of course he would know how to blow a whistle.

Seamus trotted up the slippery bank with the dummy clenched in his mouth, gave me a dismissive sideways glance, and ran off with it into the high grass. My father shook his head in disgust. Why had I insisted on this Dad-and-dog-with-a-dummy-in-his-mouth bonding? Because, after my mother diedI thought it would help.