I’ll start off with saying – TomBoy is OK. She’s currently snoozing on the couch of my camper as I’m up at the sports bar, drinking a cold one, watching the Bucs game, and writing this post. This will be a short one, but I wanted to share a nice moment I had with my best girl this afternoon.

I got TomBoy and Ricky for the weekend and took them out to the hunt club. I don’t get to see them very often anymore, much less get them out to shoot some birds over. It makes weekends like this that much more special. I miss my dogs. Probably the hardest part of this entire split has been not having all of my dogs with me.

Old dogs, especially ones as special as TomBoy, are a gift. As I’ve learned on an all-too immediate basis far too often, you never know when you’ll be unclipping them from the lead for that last time. As a result, when I take one of them out in the field, I soak it all up. TomBoy is 15 1/2; she’s pretty spry for that age, albeit stiff, and she overexerts herself pretty quickly, so I have to make moments like this short and snatch the memories as quickly as possible. You just never know.

She spent yesterday lounging on the couch in the camper. In the evening, I took her over to socialize with some of the other folks staying out at the club for the weekend. Much fun was had and she enjoyed the attention she got. I returned to the camper and 2023 came around with me asleep on the couch with her snoozing in my lap.

I can’t take her out here without putting her on at least one bird, so I took the sweet old lady out and shot one for her. Yes, I have to cater to her. I drive her out in the Mule, I throw the bird out, she only walks a short way before she finds it, the I shoot and she retrieves. It doesn’t take more than a couple of minutes, but the hours spent driving to get her and bring her out to the club are made worth it by just those few minutes.

We got our point. She doesn’t have the style that she used to, but she can still find birds and still stops. Hell, she’s more broke than Jack at this point. 🙂

I went ahead and uploaded the video of her retrieve – it’s 2 minutes long, she didn’t get a good mark on the bird, and she doesn’t move that fast, but I let her work it out, and she, as always, found the bird and brought it right back to hand. Brought a little tear to my eye.

I love this little girl. I hope to have many retrieves left out of her, but if this was the last one, the image of her wagging her tail as her white face walked back to me and dropped the bird in my hand will be a lasting one.

She’s 15 1/2. Time is short. Enjoy every moment.

You just never know.

Until next time…