Random thoughts and stylings

The day after Thanksgiving our family adopted a lovable though rather large chocolate lab from the local humane society. He was about a year when we adopted him and weighed 85 pounds, now 95. His name – Zeus, a logical name for a dog this large. Over all he is a great dog, listens fairly well and loves to be loved by the kids and all he comes in contact with.

My father keeps asking me if I think he is a hunting dog or not. I had no idea as we have not had a chance to do any kind of field tests or gun trials with him. Yesterday we found out that he does have some hunting skill in him.

Zues’ breed are primarily of the retriever family though some do better at flushing and pointing. Zeus it seems falls more into the flush and point category. When you think of the kinds of birds that are flushed by standard pointers you expect things like ruffed grouse, pigeons or pheasants, but not Zeus. He took his size and mass into consideration when deciding upon the bird he chose to flush and decided on a turkey. Yes he flushed out and pointed a 20-30 pound hen turkey. According to my wife who witnessed this odd occurrence he chased it and when it finally was airborne, which if you have ever seen a wild turkey try to fly it takes them a bit to get airborne, he pointed perfectly in the direction it was flying waiting for his retrieval. When there was no shot or fall of the turkey he just looked back and finally gave up. Poor pooch.

My question to all you hunting dog people is – Does the size of the dog equal the size of the bird he or she will naturally go towards or is my dog just over confident? In either case it is funny to picture a lab flushing a bird that large.