A friend of mine in my hometown in New York lost his long time hunting companion in 2005.
My friend , Mike Kelly, is a recently retired outdoor columnist for the Post Standard in Syracuse. This is his tribute to Harley, his Springer Spaniel that had to be put down.
With Mike’s permission I am posting his story of his long relationship with Harley.
Farewell, Old Girl
On Nov. 18, the final day of the local pheasant season, I tumbled a nice cockbird that erupted from a patch of goldenrod with my English springer spaniel in hot pursuit.
When the rooster hit the ground, Harley pinned it in place with one paw, just like she’d always done, and look proudly in my direction, as if to ask, “How’d I do, boss?”
By my reckoning, she did just fine.
Guiding Light Harley, named after a soap opera character, was the best hunting partner I ever had. She was a beloved family member and a loyal protector with lots of bark and no bite.
On Tuesday, Harley died in my arms.
Dr. Stephen Bruck, a Marcellus veterinarian with a deep well of compassion, administered the fatal needle at my request. I wept convulsively, and that night I lay awake, thinking how quickly 13 years had passed.
My wife, Chickie, and I picked Harley from a litter of pups born in May 1992, in Vestal. I liked her black and white markings and the plucky way she climbed over her siblings to greet visitors.
The day we took her home, Chickie drove and I held the whining puppy against my chest. In that brief time, we bonded forever.
Under my wife’s guidance, Harley quickly learned to sit, stay and come, but her obvious intelligence did not deter her from mischief.
Like most puppies, she liked to chew on dangling fingers and wooden furniture legs, so we sought to channel the habit by giving her our daughter Brenna’s discarded cloth hand puppet, which at the time looked like a cartoon mouse.
Although the puppet was quickly chewed beyond recognition, Harley continued to play with it constantly, and we soon referred to it as her security blanket or simply, “blankey.” Even in her old age, Harley would fetch that odd, stinky toy to show our houseguests.
When Harley wasn’t trotting around with blankey in her mouth, she was apt to be boxing with our late cat, Tabby. They often sparred in the family room, Tabby lying on her back and flicking jabs in the air while Harley circled her, darting and barking. It was a hoot to watch.
If Harley could be a bit of a clown at home, she was deadly serious in the field. She was barely five months old when she flushed her first pheasant, a left-over from a summer field trial at the Three Rivers Wildlife Management Area. There were hundreds more birds after that one.
If Harley had any significant weakness as a hunter, it was her unwillingness to retrieve, which I always attributed to the sharp peck on the nose a wounded rooster gave her during her rookie year afield. Ever thereafter, instead of picking up a shot bird, she’d simply hold it down or stand by it until I collected it myself.
That flaw aside, she was a hunting machine. She had a radar nose, the stamina of a marathon runner and indescribable determination. She quartered instinctively, seldom ranging more than 25 or 30 yards in front of me, and promptly changed directions when I whistled or signaled left or right with my outstretched hand.
Once I realized Harley knew more about pheasants than I did, I simply tagged along, shotgun at the ready, while she slashed through fields like a canine Grim Reaper.
The number of pheasants Harley accounted for in her career was impressive, and might have been astronomical if not for my absentmindedness. One night when Harley was 2 years old, I let her out to do her duty and then simply forgot about her. An hour later there was a knock on the door and a stranger asked if we owned a black and white dog.
The car that struck Harley broke her pelvis and smashed her right hip. After emergency surgery, she underwent femoral head-and-neck surgery, a procedure in which her hip socket was essentially sawed off. Months later she was back harassing pheasants, a little slower than she used to be but even more determined.
Harley hit her peak at age 8, like most flushing dogs, but kept on ticking into her pre-teens. It was only this fall that she slowed appreciably.
During her preseason runs, Harley tripped and fell several times and occasionally ran with her right rear leg held inches off the ground. In addition, she suddenly grew hard of hearing.
I kept her subsequent workouts short. Since she could no longer hear my commands, I took care to hunt where I could watch her at all times.
It seemed her career was coming to an end, but on an early November visit to a Southern Tier shooting preserve Harley performed like a champ, flushing seven of eight birds stocked before our hunt.
On that season-ending junket at Three Rivers, my tough little buddy did so well that I began to think she had one more year in her.
Those dreams were dashed the day before Thanksgiving. That afternoon Harley didn’t eat her dinner – the first time we could remember her refusing anything remotely edible. She barely lapped her water and had labored breathing.
Dr. Bruck’s gentle hands detected an enlarged liver, and the veterinarian also informed us that Harley was feverish and seriously dehydrated. He wanted to keep her a couple of days to administer fluids and antibiotics, intravenously. At first he was hopeful, but on the sixth day he called us to the clinic.
Harley had taken a definite turn for the worse. Her skin and eyes had turned yellow. She was eating next to nothing. It was a gut-wrenching decision, but after a tearful few minutes together, we lifted Harley up onto the examining table.
Since then our house seems terribly empty. When I pull into the driveway, I half expect to hear Harley’s bark, and in one corner of my eye I can still see her curled in that old green armchair.
Yet I am not going to lose myself in mourning. Come spring, my wife and I are going to start looking for another little springer spaniel with a spunky attitude and black freckles on her white chest.
She won’t be Harley, but if we give our new pup half a chance, we will learn to love her, too.
Rest in peace, old girl.
Mike and Chickie have acquired a new addition for their family, Daisy, another Springer Spaniel. Mike says she is not another Harley but special to them in her own way. I am sure Daisy will find a special place in their hearts as Harley did.
tracked to: Leaning Straight Up , Perri Nelson’s Website
