My spaniel Cydney has covered herself in glory and disgrace

Just before Cydney ran off and disgraced me on the first day of the shooting season, she covered herself in glory. This seems to be the way of things with spaniels. They are a bit like children in the sense that, so far as their public performances are concerned, they either fill you with pride or plunge you into an abyss of mortification.

Before she decided to drop me right in it, the little dog performed a really difficult retrieve from a fast-flowing stream. A hen bird was wedged between some fallen branches underneath the current. The head of the picking-up team — who also happens to be the guy who bred Cydney and helped me train her — sent all three of his dogs in, one by one, but none of them could get it out.

The first dog, Cydney’s mother, a truly great gun dog who can usually perform any kind of retrieve, wiggled around in the water, stuck her head under, sneezed, shook her head, jumped back out. The second dog, one of Cydney’s cousins, threw himself in and splashed around manfully to no avail. The third dog, another cousin, managed to locate the bird under the water, but couldn’t pull it free. The dog trainer stood on the side of the bank urging them all to get back in and try again but none of the spaniels was having it. A desperate squeaking sound pervaded the air as they all expressed their frustration with the enterprise.

At this point, I was searching a section of nearby woodland I had been assigned to because it was fenced off. The trainer considers Cydney to be unreliable off the lead, you see, and he blames me for this unreliability.