We were hunting a stock pond, a half-acre willow-fringed dugout nestled between a block of spruce-studded bush and a sprawling pea field in the pothole-free Peace Country. The gunning proved a last light affair as mallards swarmed over our setup, looking for a drink before feasting on the waste peas. Three of us shot for barely 30 minutes to fill our respective eight-bird bags.

We had dead ducks on the water, birds crashing into the thickly-brushed bush edge, and woundies sailing a hundred yards or more out into the field. Tanner operated on cruise control, showing the experience of his years, often retrieving two marked birds at a time. He only checked in when I needed to give him a line on a blind. It was a ton of work, but he was more than up to it. And that was a beautiful thing.

It wasn’t until several days after we’d returned home, after the mood, excitement, and the adrenaline of the hunt had worn off, that he seized again. And that would remain the pattern throughout the season. He’d be fine on each and every three- to five-day hunt. But afterwards, after coming down from the high, and maybe a week or two later, there’d be a seizure, one he’d just as likely have had, had he not hunted at all. All the potassium bromide in the world wasn’t working.

Still not satisfied with the epileptic diagnosis, come December I finally decided to take Tanner in for an MRI and a spinal tap at the Animal Emergency Center in Milwaukee. These pricey diagnostics ruled out all physiological explanations for the seizures once and for all, leaving epilepsy the only logical explanation. But we couldn’t just go on dealing with the potentially damaging, ever-more-ravaging episodes. So with the help of the good doctor Lichtenberger at the Center we souped up the dosage of potassium bromide and added phenobarbital once again.

The combination effectively eliminated the seizures. That was good. But I was left with a bumbling, stumbling, drooly, droopy-eyed dog that was pretty well stoned. Tanner wasn’t even a shadow of his former self. And that was bad, real bad.

I tolerated the situation for three months, agonizing over Tanner’s future, or even if there was to be one. He couldn’t go on like he was. In my mind, he wouldn’t want to. So, trying to be his advocate, I began to cut back on the meds. My plan was to get him to a level where he was functional once again. If the seizures returned and his quality of life didn’t, I’d put him down.

By April he was the better part of his old self and still seizure free. He wasn’t as razor sharp as he’d once been, to be sure, a function no doubt of the medicines and the trauma of the seizures. But he appeared ready to go to work, to hunt.

So we hit the road for a rendezvous with my good Manitoban friend, Randy Lewis, and if we were lucky, some late spring snow geese. For four days we struck white gold. Randy, a couple of his buddies and I saved the tundra to the tune of several hundred snows and blues, a good half of which Tanner happily retrieved, often two at a time. (Thanks to his “big giant head”as my wife Mary calls it, and his naturally competitive, even greedy nature, he’s learned to body-hold and carry two snows at a time.) Long marks, his forte, were no problem. And neither were the blinds on which he handled just fine. He was back, at least far enough to make us both happy.