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Originally Posted by Devan Brown
My Lab is also Lucy - and she retrieved in ice yesterday.
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My very first lab was named Lucy. Very smart dog, maybe too smart. I think I posted about her here before. She was a mix between Kellog dogs that were primarily service animals and River Oaks Corky. She was runt of the litter so no one really wanted her. At that time PTSD was not really recognized condition and she would have been perfect in that role as a comfort animal.
I built an incredible bond with that dog before hunting season and even broke her from being gun shy. She loved me more than bacon and would actually grin to see me every time I came home from somewhere. However she did not really like to hunt since she viewed her mission statement was to just be with me. She knew how to retrieve and probably one of the best swimming dogs I ever had, she could flat out move through the water almost effortlessly. I thought man this great.
First time I had her hunting in really cold icy weather with my dads friends and my veterinarian that gave me the dog (thats why I knew so much about breeding), we shoot some ducks down and I send her. She did not budge. She was so cold she was just shivering and I try to send her again and she just looked up at me with this blank cold stare and let out a shivering almost moaning guttural growl. The laughs we got were painful, only thing I could do to save face was tell her to stay. That was easy for her since she was not budging and she did that with vim and vigor that cold morning.
Glad to hear other black labs named Lucy are punching through that icy barrier. Regardless I loved my Lucy more than anything and had her breed to a dog named Black Max that was another AKC champion. Lucy produced a great litter of pups and I got an incredible hunting dog from that litter. He had has mom's smarts and an incredible drive to please and retrieve. He did not do it all the time but he would actually dive down after swimming cripples. First time he did it freaked me out. We were hunting in a partly frozen beaver pond, part of pond even in deep water had ice so thick you could stand on it. The ducks had been working that area so much the open water we did have we guess was caused/created by their milling around. I shot a mallard down with that crappy just now forced in to use steel shot, that we did not know much about, and only crippled the duck. Send the dog and duck swims under the ice and my dog goes in under the ice after him. I was standing in waist deep water at the time but I think I almost walked on water for about 15 yards to get to the ice. Thankfully right as I got to the ice his head popped up in the open water.
He was gladly un-phased. I look over my shoulder and about 30 yards away that duck popped up in a hole on edge of pond that had much shallower water that was slushy from where we walked in thinking we could bust the ice. Grabbed my dog by the scruff of his neck and lifted and pushed him on top of the ice. I point the duck out to him and send him and he takes off and almost jumps on that duck. I think he wanted that dang bird more than I did. That was last time I ever used #6 steel shot. We used to kill ducks easily with 5 and 6 lead shot and did not know at the time how badly steel shot performed and patterned with tighter fixed choked guns.