Dreamcatchers

By Randy Lawrence

The whelping box in Michigan may as well have been on the other side of the moon given the way I felt last evening.  It had been over eight hours since Firelight Dreamboat Annie off-loaded her first piece of precious cargo, a mostly white, tri-colored male.   Two hours had gone by since puppy #6 was delivered, and Annie was still in labor.  I knew the delivery had to be wearing on Lynn Dee and her friends and helpers, Paul Nensewitz and Bryan Burdick there at the whelping box.  Mostly, I figured Annie had to be getting weary.

This is the time in every puppy delivery I have attended where the little voice used to creep into my head: "What in the h-e-double-hockey-sticks were you thinking?  You wouldn't trade (Arran, Dixie, Fancy, Marquesa) for all the bird dog puppies on the planet!"

   

           

But that kind of half-panicked nonsense is for amateurs like me. 

Lynn Dee is no amateur.  She is the most competent brood minder I have ever known - thoughtful, thorough, intuitive, informed, cool in crisis, totally in tune with the dog in labor.  Paul is a Registered Nurse who has assisted Lynn Dee twice before, a most welcome ringer in the doggy delivery room.  Bryan was there as an understudy with aims of breeding his own setters one day, quiet and smart, a dog man's dog man, the perfect second to the two pros.   He rummaged through Lynn Dee's 'fridge and whomped up a good bait of comfort food during the vigil.   Both Paul and Bryan have Firelight setters of their own.  They know Annie and the rest of Lynn Dee's pack very well, providing another layer of calming influence.

Paul (l) and Bryan enjoying a post-hunt tailgate lunch this past fall. LD as photographer

The digital stream of photos and updates and funny anecdotes flowed from 11:29 am until the last puppy was born at 8:17 pm, and then on until the fellows went home and Lynn Dee settled into her nightwatch air mattress at 11:20 pm after one very long day of navigating Dreamboat Annie through the neonatal buoys.   Firelight Generation Eight, eight puppies strong,  rested in safe harbor.

But forget for a moment an all-day whelping.  Well before that, this batch, like all Firelights, has been a long time coming. 

There were the years of watching their dam come into her own in the field, a fast, cover-slashing, tail-cracking performer whose white undermarkings flash on even the dullest days.  She goes about her business with bold purpose and stands game with high style and electric intensity, a worthy heir to her superb dam, the hard-driving bird finder, Firelight Mustang Sally, and Annie's sire, my boon companion, the greatly missed October Blue Doc.  

Firelight Mustang Sally (maternal grand dam...one truly "grand dame!")

In some ways, this litter carries even more than the usual edge-of-our-seats anticipation.  For Annie's second mating, Lynn Dee continued research she had begun years earlier, then took time out of her hunting season to travel 1500 miles round trip to hook Annie up with a dog named Nash, a stone cold bird dog with uncommon "receipts," as the young people say.  How Nash's background nicks with Annie's is...well...the stuff of which dreams are made.

Nash on wild birds - Kansas

Nash, cheesecake shot, training at home.

In that vein, I have been thinking of Dreamboat Annie's puppies as a merry band of proto-dreamcatchers.  Authentic dreamcatchers have their roots in Ojibwe culture, a tribe that, by the early 17th century, had established itself in birch bark wickiups scattered through the region where Annie lives, hunts, and whelped her litter.

The original dreamcatchers were crafted of willow hoops woven with sinew, draped with game bird feathers, and hung above sleeping platforms.  The notion was that dreams from the spirit world would be filtered through the dreamcatcher's web with only good dreams making it through.

Birdhunters are nothing if not dreamers of good dreams, absolute fools for signs and portents.  A photo of puppy #5, a tri-colored male, came in at 4:33 pm.  

That's about the time I must have gotten something in my eye, I guess.  Anyway, the photo became a bit wet and blurry, coming back into focus looking like this:

My late Doc (maternal grandsire)

That whelping box may be 413 road miles from this cold and snowy hill farm, but it is centered smack dab in the middle of a sentimental old bird hunter's soul.