The author's wife, Brodie, and Heidi with Alberta pheasants.

Having a dog that won't stay put makes it awfully hard to sneak up on ponds to jump shoot ducks, or to decoy approaching waterfowl. It took me a long time to realize that she was simply bonded to me so completely that nothing--NOTHING--was ever going to separate us. Yet, strange to say, as much as she wanted to be with me, she had no interest in praise or being petted.

(Years later, at dinner one night, I was describing the peculiarities of Heidi's personality to one of my hunting partners and his wife, a specialist in childhood development problems. After she had listened for a while she pronounced simply, "Heidi's autistic.")

Her strength and determination were not in doubt. One day we tried to go to town without Heidi, and left her chained to her doghouse inside a four-foot-tall wire pen. We were halfway across the river when Brodie suddenly saw Heidi swimming frantically after us.

"Look at how fast that little monster can swim!" she said.

"Yes" I replied, with a slight reservation, "but she doesn't seem quite as fast as normal."

When she came panting up to us after having been swept several hundred yards downstream the reason became clear. This barely three-month old pup had yanked the huge staple out of the wood, climbed the fence, and swum the swift river dragging 20 feet of chain.

Neither was her intelligence lacking. It usually took only one or two lessons to learn what was expected of her. Unfortunately, her stubbornness exceeded her intelligence and athleticism combined.

Worst of all, she didn't particularly want to retrieve. When she did, she just wanted to run around with the dummy, of course, and play "keep away." Wolters' trick of running away, clapping your hands while calling "come," then snatching the dummy away as the dog comes alongside and immediately praising her worked--precisely once. She was much too smart to fall for it again, and too agile besides.

When she did bring a dummy to me she would drop it. I'd put it back in her mouth, hold my hand under her chin and encouragingly say "hold." She'd look me in the eye and spit it out. After several repetitions I'd give her a whack and shout at her, and she would finally, reluctantly hold it. Then I'd hold out my hand and say a friendly "Give." She would look me in the eye and clamp down on it.

Then one day as I sat writing at the kitchen table, a solitary sandpiper (Tringa solitaria) the only solitary sandpiper, in fact, that we have ever seen at our cabin, flying as fast as a solitary sandpiper can possibly fly, smacked into the window. As I examined the dead shorebird, an idea stuck me as suddenly as the sandpiper had struck the glass.

I called Heidi. I jumped around, talking excitedly, teasing her with the warm bird, then threw it and sent her. She raced over, but at the bird she seemed unsure of the unfamiliar smell and texture. She brought it back gingerly, holding one wing in her teeth, her lips curled delicately back.

My heart sank. Would this pup never be a retriever? But I threw it once more and her response was more enthusiastic. I threw it again and again, and gradually the smell and feel of the real thing started triggering latent instincts.

She began sprinting out, grabbing the now bedraggled bird and running back so I would throw it again. A switch had been flipped; from that day on retrieving was fun.