Brownlee didn't feel the least discouraged. He said he saw now that
the whole principle of what he had done was wrong; that no dog with any
brains whatever could be anything but frightened to hear a gun shot off
right in the bosom of his family. That was no place to fire a gun. He
said Fluff evidently thought the whole lot of us were crazy, and ran in
fear of his life, thinking we were insane and might shoot him next.
He said the thing to do was to take the shotgun into its natural
surroundings and let Fluff learn to love it there. He pictured Fluff
enjoying the sound of the gun when he heard it at the edge of the lake.
Murchison never hunted ducks, but as Fluff was his dog, he went with
Brownlee, and of course Massett went. Massett wanted to see the failure.
He said he wished stags were as plentiful as ducks, and he would show
Brownlee!
Fluff was a strong dog--he seemed to have a strain of ox in him, so far
as strength went--and as long as he saw the gun he insisted that he
would stay at home; but when Brownlee wrapped the gun in brown paper so
it looked like a big parcel from the meat shop, the horse that they had
hitched to the buck-board was able to drag Fluff along without straining
itself. Fluff was fastened to the rear axle with a chain.
When they reached Duck Lake, Brownlee untied Fluff and patted him,
and then unwrapped the gun. Fluff gave one pained glance and made the
six-mile run home in seven minutes without stopping. He was home before
Brownlee could think of anything to say, and he went so far into his
kennel that Murchison had to take off the boards at the back to find him
that night.
“That's nothing,” was what Brownlee said when he did speak; “young dogs
are often that way. Gun fright. They have to be gun broken. You come out
to-morrow, and I'll show you how a man who really knows how to handle a
dog does the trick.”
The next day, when Fluff saw the buck-board he went into his kennel, and
they couldn't pry him out with the hoe-handle. He connected buckboards
and guns in his mind, so Brownlee borrowed the butcher's delivery wagon,
and they drove to Wild Lake. It was seven miles, but Fluff seemed more
willing to go in that direction than toward Duck Lake. He did not seem
to care to go to Duck Lake at all.
“Now, then,” said Brownlee, “I'll show you the intelligent way to handle
a dog. I'll prove to him that he has nothing to fear, that I am his
comrade and friend. And at the same time,” he said, “I'll not have him
running off home and spoiling our day's sport.”
So he took the chain and fastened it around his waist, and then he sat
down and talked to Fluff like an old friend, and got him in a playful
mood. Then he had Murchison get the gun out of the wagon and lay it on
the ground about twenty feet off. It was wrapped in brown paper.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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