Scott Linden Outdoors

(In the interest of diversity, fairness and as part of his new contract, Buddy will be writing his own blog post once in a while. Here is his first submission.)

The Boss let me have the laptop tonight, sez he’s tired after our hunt today. Him tired? I was doing all the running, up to the top of the peaks for those running things that go “chuk-chuk.” I slide over the snow, jump over boulders and scrape my pads on the scree, just to watch them streak off the cliff, and not even toward my human!

The author, with his nephew/apprentice, relaxing between hunts

My feet are killing me! And I have twice as many as The Boss. But it was worth it to help my nephew grow as a hunter. The Pup’s got potential, if he’ll just pay attention to The Boss … and me! Sure, I’m “older” but can still teach him a few new tricks, like that last bird today. He thinks the job is over when his tail goes up and he raises his front paw. The Boss gets all happy, saying the good-boy words while he puts his boom stick together.

Then the birdy goes brrrrrr and gets away (they always do, so I don’t bother trying to catch them), but The Boss’ stick goes boom and it falls in a big bush by the cold wet splashy stuff. The Pup tried to poke his nose and head between the sticky sticks but they were sharp! Boss asked me – nicely for a change – to help and I could smell those sweet, delicious feathers once or twice. But then he talked loud just before I jumped off the cliff to look down there for the smell.

I watched over The Pup as he raced from sage to wild rose, (they’re so cute at that age) snuffling at old feather smells and dead deer pieces, but you gotta give him credit for trying. Too big for his collar sometimes, but his beard and eyebrows are nice and bushy, so The Mommy likes him.

I ran and ran, ignoring all the dead cow pieces and other fun stuff, putting one foot in front of the other and the other and the other. But that bird in the bush was suddenly worth two in the paw! When The Boss turned us back toward the box-on-wheels that he always yells at, I snuck back into that thicky-sticky bush. He didn’t see me go, but the sticks were bumping me and rattling like two chew toys in a big box at Christmas.

I knew the tweet-tweet thing would soon make me go back to The Boss, so to keep him happy and show The Pup how it’s done, I used both nostrils and zeroed in on the little dead flying thing real quick. Ooh, there is nothing sweeter than holding them, tasting, inhaling, drinking in the feather smell after the stick goes boom and we find them on the ground. Or in this case, caught in the sticky parts of a bush only a Big Dog could reach. You won’t see The Pup doing that … at least for a while!

Yep, it’s a ruff life. But I can handle it.

Signed,

Three Devils Yankee’s Buddy