A very good dog

This is M.

Back in November, I was taking care of him while his owner was out of state. I was also running the generators for the owner, but mostly watching after M. He's a useful dog. Something around 11 years old (you can see the grey on his muzzle and belly; look at the sagittal crest on his skull), but still energetic, and incredibly well trained. Not vocal at all. And he didn't get into trouble. But this is not why he is a good, useful dog.

I was sighting in my ruger 10/22, which is a small rifle you use for ptarmigan, and for furbearers (except wolf, which really takes a .223). M was along, and when he saw me get out the rifle, he got very excited. M is trained as a gun dog, and thought I was going to get him birds to carry back.

I started sighting in, and then did some free fire, and while I did, M started to get confused. Where were the birds? You could see the thought process in his canine head. There were no birds, he reasoned, because he hadn't flushed them. M ran out to flush anything he could find. Camprobbers and Chickadees went flapping as he dislodged them all from their perch. I stopped firing, not wanting to hit any.

M took my lack of firing as a sign I hit something. He started searching around under where I was aiming. Gosh, that was where he was shooting, but where's the dead birds? He dug around a bit, looked confused, and then finally found something. He carried it on back to me, and dropped it. The picture above is right after he dropped it. He apparently thought that since I was shooting at a tree (a target hanging from the tree) he should bring back some sticks.

M is a very good, and very useful dog. He's trained to hunt firewood. :}