News Hounds Ady & Flo www.sunlive.co.nz

It's an exciting time to be a retriever, when the shooting season starts and we get a chance to answer our calling.

Bred to fetch, I can chase and fetch all day. I've been practising with sticks and balls and things and chasing live birds at every opportunity. I get so excited when the guns come out of the safe and I get a whiff of that gun oil and hear the snap of the polished metal-on-metal action.

I heard of one keen Labrador who got so carried away when his boss got the gun out for cleaning before the hunting season, she took off into the bush for a few days and started without him. Well I'm not that fanatical, and try not to let the boss from my sight. I might miss something!

The other day the boss loaded me and Ady and my favourite uncle and mates into the duck boat – the one that looks like it was parked too close to the paint factory explosion – and off we went for my first opening day. It was all a bit wide-eyed and overwhelming for a young pup, but I was itching to get out there and have a go. I kept an eye on the trees, because sometimes when the gun comes out, possums fall from the branches. Not today though.

From the first gunshots I figured out the critters fall from the sky. I was eagerly looking for the downed bird and when the boss said 'go” I keenly swam out to it.

'Yep, there it is boss.” And I swam back. 'It's a bird alright.”

That was fun. Shoot the gun again.

It was at this point that the boss pointed out that I was meant to actually pick up the bird and swim back with it, like Ady does.

Huh?

I've been trained all year to chase sticks and balls. I don't think my job description covers dead things? I've been eyeing up these flying contraptions every day that uncle takes me for a run at The Lakes with Ady. But finally getting up close with the feathery flappers was a bit daunting, to start with. In the meantime, I will just watch the veterans while I pluck up courage.

Still, the day was so exciting that I could hardly sit still in the maimai. At one point, during a quiet patch, I heard gunfire from another party of shooters a few hundred metres along the shore. I started running there straight away, in case they needed help! The boss called me back and explained it wasn't the done thing, to run madly between whichever maimai was producing the action. They'll call if they need my help.

Bugger, I just have to wait then.

Eventually the boss shoots a couple of geese. They thudded into the water like an Airbus in the Hudson River. I went out for a look at those, too, but man, have you seen the size of those suckers? A dog would need a barge the size of Smit Borneo to get one of those ashore. I swam a couple of victory laps around it and then left it for him to pick up in a kayak.

If the weather hadn't been so nice and the ducks were flying lower and his dodgy shoulder wasn't playing up... (translation: if the boss had been a better shot) I'd have had more practice and a chance to figure out how Ady does it. Never mind, plenty of season left and by next year, I'll be bigger and wiser and duck-savvy.

After a couple of exciting days, early mornings and a whole lot of running around, I was dog-tired. I fell asleep in the boat, my weary whiskers on his gun case, exhausted. At least he couldn't pick it up without waking me! In the meantime I'm just hanging out for another day in the funny little boat and a chance to hear those booming guns again. It stirs something deep in my ancestral psyche.

Gotta run now, I think I just heard the rattle of the boatshed door.