Gypsy - Tribute to a Beloved Dog

Seventeen years ago, I bought a puppy. 

Today, I said goodbye to that puppy.  A hunting buddy, companion, beloved family pet, a soft-natured, ever patient loving dog with the heart of a lion; she succumbed finally, peacefully, to old age and kidney failure.

It isn’t correct to say I picked her out of her litter.  Rather, she picked me.  

It was a warm northeast Iowa spring day, when I went to see an advertised litter of English Springer Spaniels.  There were three puppies left; a black and white male, a liver and white female, and an unusual tricolor female; liver and white, with eyebrows and cheeks of tan.  As I was looking for a bird dog, I ran the pups through a few aptitude tests I had read about; all showed some natural ability.  The decision promised to be a hard one, until the tricolor bitch came up to me, sat on my boot, placed a tiny paw on my pant leg and looked up at me.  I took her home.

She was named “Gypsy” partly for the patchwork appearance of her tri-colored coat, and partly for a Fleetwood Mac song that was popular that year.

We started training Gypsy for AKC Obedience trials at the same time I started to train her as a gun dog.  This went against the advice of quite a few dog trainers, actually, but she excelled at both, earning her Companion Dog and Companion Dog Excellent certificates in Obedience and learning the trade of finding, flushing and retrieving Iowa pheasants, grouse, and partridge.

In the fall of her first year, at nine months of age, she entered and competed in her first and only field trial.  The trial judge cast a mallard drake, wings taped, into a pond.  Gypsy leaped from the bank and hit the water in a manner to make any Labrador proud. Upon her reaching the drake, though, the old trial-wise duck pecked her soundly in the eye.  She retreated to the bank in confusion, and through her long life, never touched another duck.  To top things off, a local news crew was on hand, and Gypsy’s travails were on the 6 o’clock news that evening, to the lasting amusement of my hunting buddies.

In spite of her refusal to touch waterfowl, she proved a magnificent bird dog.  She hunted pheasants, Hungarian partridge, ruffed grouse, and retrieved all to hand with equal aplomb.  She even retrieved rabbits, spitting fur out for several seconds afterward.  Her one flaw as a gun dog was a passion for hunting and eating mice, which proved impossible to dissuade her from.  She had endless stamina, a seeming imperviousness to cold and wet.  When a gun case and shooting jacket appeared, she bounded to the door, eyes bright and tail wagging.  And even in my twenties, I was always the first one to get tired enough to call it a day.

Gypsy and I shared the back end of a compact pickup on many a cold night, huddled together against the chill.  We pursued birds across the state of Iowa, and later Colorado, where Gypsy learned the ways of blue and sage grouse and white-tailed ptarmigan.  On one alpine adventure after ptarmigan, Gypsy disappeared into a clump of trees, where I heard the sounds of furious barking; rounding the corner of the copse I found her nose to nose with a black bear.  The bear dealt her a furious clout with a forepaw, sending her spinning; she regained her feet and charged in again, snapping at the bear’s heels as it moved slowly off up the hillside.  She returned to me with tail wagging, no doubt convinced she had saved her master from the bear. 

But Gypsy was more than a bird dog.  She was a beloved family pet as well.  Small children could sit on her, pull on her long, softly feathered ears, and she would hold patiently still.  My oldest daughter, Rachel, competed with Gypsy for wading pool space on hot days.  The two grew up together, and Rachel entered her senior year of high school in Gypsy’s last year. At my parents home on a trout stream in eastern Iowa, Gypsy earned family fame for swimming laps in the creek; often staying in the water for half and hour or more without her feet touching bottom.  Later, my two younger girls, Sarah and Rebecca, also knew and loved Gypsy; from them, Gypsy knew the experience of being dressed up and generally fussed over, and even in her last months she never grew cross or irritable with the small ones. 

Seventeen years ago I bought a puppy. 

Now my beloved friend and companion is gone.  Her body, aged and infirm, failed her at last; but her spirit never flagged.  Now, somewhere beyond, her spirit knows youth and strength once more.  Now, somewhere beyond, with all the vigor of youth, she is running, running, through the brush and the brambles; bounding through the aspen groves, towards the bright, sunny lands of summer, where somewhere, the birds are waiting.