Betty’s First Brown 

Last Saturday evening I went for a short float with our black lab puppy Betty. Betty is the best thing to come out of the trainwreck that was the year 2020.  She is now just over a year old, and has already proven to be one of the best dogs I’ve ever had in my life.  Betty is well behaved, smart, happy and playful.  She is also great on my boat, and willing to sit quietly on the bow and just take it all in. We also got a terrific Manx cat called Minnie last year, and she has also taken to going for rides on the boat, mostly to hang out with her good friend Betty.  

Betty has a big collar (or collars) to fill. For the last fifteen years, we've had the same three dogs, Ted, a rescue mutt, Daisy, a homeless black lab that found her forever home with us, and Yuker, a handsome yellow lab.  To have three dogs all together for that long is a pretty extraordinary thing.  It was a very stable and happy family dog dynamic.  But as much as I hoped that they would stay together forever, my wife knew that all good things would eventually come to and end, and she had been thinking about what would come after. There is a lab breeder in Paonia whose dogs my wife had encountered, and in February she had a litter with some puppies available.  I wasn’t ready to go out and get another dog, and didn’t want to think about the days of our current dog pack ever ending.  But we drove down to Paonia in May, with the world still in Covid-induced lockdown, to get our new puppy.   

The farm was a bit of Labrador Retriever heaven.  It was located in an old orchard, and was well irrigated, green and lush. There  were were a couple of dozen black and yellow labs in different yards, in all sizes.  The little black lab we chose was the one the breeder considered to be the pick of the litter, but she already had a couple of black females and was keeping a yellow lab for herself out of the bunch.  We spent most of the ride home trying to decide what name to give her. It wasn’t something I wanted to think about until we actually met her, but now that we had we came up with “Betty”, like the song “Black Betty”. We tried out a few others,  but that was the name she responded to.

Personally, I didn’t want to have another yellow lab to replace Yuker with.  One of the most common mistakes people make when they lose a dog they love, is to replace them with the exact same type of dog. The new dog rarely lives up the expectations set by it's predecessor, and its not fair to the dog or their human companion. Yuker was the best dog I could’ve ever hoped to have, and so he’ll probably be my last yellow lab. About the only bad behavior he ever exhibited was a dislike for puppies, and when they would get in his face too much he would often bite them in the ear. Betty moved in to our house and dog home like she owned the joint. Yuker gave her a few low growls at first, but in no time at all she was sharing beds with Daisy and Yuker like they were her family, which of course they were now.  

All three of our older dogs began showing signs of decline over the summer. Ted had died first that previous winter, and we buried him on our pet cemetery up on the hill overlooking the river and Flat Tops. At his funeral Daisy managed to slip off the hill to a hard landing, and she was never quite a hundred percent after that. By fall it looked like Yuker and Daisy might not make it through the winter, so before the cold weather set in I dug two deep holes for them as close to Ted’s as I could. Daisy died in February, and Betty lost one of her bed mates. Betty went up the hill to say goodbye to her Auntie Daisy, but Yuker could no longer make the trip up the hill. Terena got him a harness which we used to get him in and out of the house for bathroom breaks. For the last couple of months he couldn’t use his back legs, and for the last week he couldn’t use his front ones.  Yuker seemed to just slip away finally over a couple of days, and just lay there not wanting to get up or eat anymore. He didn’t seem to be in any pain, it just seemed like he was finally ready to go join his sister and brother up on the beautiful hill. And so he is there now, along with the five other dogs, cats, and one little fawn that are having their final rests as well under colorful piles of river rock.  

One of the best and worse things about pets is that we get to see the entire arc of their lives in just a short sliver of ours. They go from helpless babies to incredible athletes to steadfast companions. and then to elderly incontinent seniors in what seems like a very short time.  Its the devil's bargain we make when we bring a new furry family member into our home.  We know that someday, they're going to break our heart, but that ten or fifteen years of what they add to our lives is hopefully worth the pain we know we'll feel someday when we lose them.  

So now black Betty is our one and only dog.  She got to spend enough time with her furry elders to learn how to behave in or home and to be a good dog.  Betty is spoiled like only an only child, whether they have fur or not, can be. She got a couple of short boat rides out in the backyard last fall, and fell in once off my raft which I thought might turn her off to being in the water.  But by the time the river froze over in December, she was already swimming in it going out after sticks, but not too far.  When the ice melted off in March, she was ready to get out in it and loves the river now, even more than Yuker or Daisy ever did.  Betty loves the water and can hardly be kept out of it.  She is a Lab’s Lab.   

Now its May, and a year since Betty entered our lives. My boat has been tied up to my dock out on the river for the last three weeks, and I’ve been taking it out for short floats almost every evening.  I’m lucky enough to have the Best Backyard In America.  Not only is the Colorado River right there 24/7, but I can use the back eddies to row almost a quarter mile upstream, and then use the current to float back to my dock. There are also three good holes that I can row and fish to.  

I’ve already caught a few nice fish on my backyard floats this spring, but for one reason or another Betty was never with me.  Twice I’ve hooked fish while she watched, but both times they came off before I could land them and show them to her.  But this week the river  warmed up, and the caddis were beginning to hatch. Each night there were more caddis than the evening before, and by Saturday night they were everywhere.  

So I pushed off the dock in my Hog Island dory with Betty (after tossing the cat out), and headed upriver to try and catch a fish that I could impress my dog with.  I dropped anchor just below the first hole, which is immediately below the railroad bridge, and watched for rise forms.  There were plenty of caddis looking like little black moths on the water, but there didn’t seem to be any fish eating them. So I ferried across the river, and floated up the opposite side to the big hole on top.  The best thing about the upper fishing hole is that there is a perfect riffle to toss streamers into, and a little back eddy for drifting dry flies.  With all the caddis flying about, it was my little seven foot three weight I grabbed. It was already rigged with my standard setup, which is a Hi-Vis Elk Hair Caddis trailed by a small olive mayfly. At the bottom of the eddy, I dropped anchor again and watched the water carefully for a bit to see if any fish were rising. Very quickly I saw a rise, and then another, and another, and so it was time to toss the flies out to see what might happen.   

The caddis were everywhere. They were on the water, in the air, and all over my boat.  They started to piss off Betty, and instead of her normal calm self, she started biting and snapping at them.  Then she took to licking them off the gunwales of the boat.  I was concentrating on trying to drop my dry flies onto some of the more promising bubble lines, but there were so many real flies on the water that it was going to take a miracle for one of them to choose mine.  I tried to get the caddis to skate a little to make it stand out a bit, but the trailing fly dragged on it a bit.  I brought the flies back in, and cut the mayfly off.  With just the Elk Hair Caddis on, I could make it dance a little.  I cast again, but it was almost impossible to distinguish my fly from all of the real ones.  I’d see a rise that was near my fly, and set the hook, only to find out that it wasn’t my fly that had just been eaten. I realized that I’d have to really concentrate on watching where my fly landed, because if I took my eye off of it for even an moment it would get lost among the hundreds of naturals.  

But concentrating wasn’t easy. The caddis were crawling up my pant legs, into my nostrils and on my hands.  Betty kept trying to eat them too and that was very distracting.  It was so dark, that even with the orange post on the fly it was a mere silhouette.  I’d give it little tugs to make it look alive, hoping that a trout would do to it in in the water what Betty was doing to the flies in the boat. Then I realized that maybe I just wanted to catch a fish too much, not for my sake but for Betty’s.  I’ve been fishing for a long time, and usually don’t care that much whether I actually catch anything or not.  Usually, just fooling one or two trout is enough, and even if I don’t get a fish to hand that’s enough . But now I really wanted to catch a fish, and I don’t typically feel that strongly about it. The less I care, the better I do.  Fish, like women in a singles bar, seem to be able to almost smell your desperation.   

  Then finally I felt it.  I lifted the rod a little and something pulled back.  I raised it even more, and the lightly set drag on my reel began to sing.  The line streaked downstream, which distracted Betty from vacuuming the caddis off the boat.  The fish splashed on the surface, which commanded her attention even more.  My little fiberglass rod had a satisfying bend to it, and the fish fought so well I thought it had to be a rainbow. When It finally tired enough that I was able to get it to the boat and into my net.  It wasn’t a rainbow after all, but a brown trout foul-hooked in the back.  Oh well, I wanted to find Betty a fish, and she wasn’t going to care whether it was caught in the mouth or not.  

Betty was transfixed by the sight of this weird creature emerging from the cold water. I held it up to her nose, knowing that she would be gentle with it. We have plenty of small creatures around our place like baby quail and chickens, and Betty is very gentle with them all.  She looked at the fish with curiosity, and some puzzlement.  I put the trout back in the water,  and moved it back in forth in the current to revive it.  In a moment or two it shot out of my hand and back into the black depths of the river.  Betty went back to eating the caddis that were tormenting her, while I pulled up anchor to float back to our yard.  And she got to see the first of what would hopefully be many trout to come. 

By the time that Betty is an old dog, I will be too.  When the arc of her life is coming to its conclusion, so will mine.  Maybe when her time comes, I won't be strong enough to carry her up that hill. But I'm still looking forward to the journey. 

 

Jack Bombardier 

jackbombardier@hotmail.com 

http://jackbombardier.blogspot.com/