When my wife and I were much younger we wanted a dog.  Not just any dog.  A Cocker Spaniel.  A Buff-colored one.  A female.  Then we read about Jazz.

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The ad read as follows…Cocker Spaniel Puppies.  Two Black Males.  $225.00.  I told my wife we would just look.  She knew better but agreed.  I stopped and took out the money on the way . . . just in case.

The owner took us into a dark shed.  There was a box.  The puppy stood up against the side of the box to greet us.  My wife picked him up and he peed on her as she held his silky body and looked into his chocolate eyes.  I paid and we left.

The passage of time tells me we had no issues with Jazz.  We were the real problem.  We hadn’t planned.  We didn’t know the first thing about training.  We were young and naive but we loved Jazz and he loved us.  In fact, he turned out to be a great dog.

However, one night I was less than happy when he wanted to sing all night because he had been left alone in the living room while we tried to sleep.  Another time, I accidentally stepped on his leg when he got under my feet and he needed knee surgery.

One day in the back yard, I wasn’t paying attention and he ran around the house to the front yard toward the highway.  When I found him he was smelling the tulips.  We also learned early on was not to get between him and his dog dish.

But he also liked to stretch his legs out behind him like a seal while he slept.  He was a snuggle bunny on the couch with my wife.  He enjoyed riding in the car . . . in the front seat of course.  And he would go bonkers when we mentioned it was time to go ‘walkies’.  We also found that when our hearts were heavy we could talk with him and he would sit and listen for hours.

Then, one day a friend was surprised that I had not bought a bird dog.  After doing some reading, I found that Cocker Spaniels were bred to be bird dogs.  So Jazzy became my bird dog.  He wasn’t necessarily the bird dog I had in mind, but a bird dog nonetheless.

Thus began our adventures.  I’d grab my Carhart coat weighed down with shotgun shells, a hat, some boots, and Jazzy and we’d tromp the woods nearby or my old hunting grounds about an hour away from home.

In retrospect, we found a ton of birds!  However, Jazzy’s bird work was less than stellar, at least in my eyes at the time.  In fact, it seemed that any time Jazz found some bird scent, he would go in the opposite direction.  Along with these weaknesses, the only thing he ever fetched was a Rainbow Trout that fell off the hook when I got it close to shore.

The last hunt I remember with him, we were at my Grandmother’s old farm when she was still alive.  We bagged two birds in a row that day!  The first Grouse didn’t make it through a small opening in a brushy fence row after his associate had.  Just before dark, the second Grouse flushed at a pretty good distance and rocketed toward the tops of some Maples before cart-wheeling back to earth.  On the way home, we stopped at McDonald’s and I bought Jazzy a Happy Meal.

While Jazzy stayed close by in cover and constantly checked in, his replacement is usually a speck on the horizon.  Scout is a German Short Haired Pointer who is loaded with brains, drive, athleticism, and intuition.  She can smell a bird from a mile away and this gifting, while a blessing, also gets her into plenty of trouble at times.  All of the commands she obeys so well in the kitchen go out the window when she’s outside.  At times I wonder if a Greyhound crawled under a fence somewhere in her lineage.

This brings me back to Jazz.  We were surprised when he left us at the age of ten.  In retrospect, he was our first child.  Many of the things he taught us were in preparation for our three children to come.  Although we loved Jazz, we weren’t always the best parents.  Again, we knew absolutely nothing about the importance of obedience and proper discipline.  It’s also no surprise that he never turned out to be the bird master I expected him to be since he received little or no training other than being told to fetch.

Maybe things would have been different if I had introduced him to some Pigeons.  I could have taught him to fetch in a short hallway where there were no distractions and little room to escape.  I could have worked with him in the yard.  I could have built upon a string of simple commands.  I could have watched him more in the woods rather than hunting as I always had without a dog.  I could have taken him out with other dogs who had been trained.  But I did none of those things.

The last words I told Jazz through tears were “You’re a good boy.  You’re a good boy.  You’re a good boy.”  And at that moment he was.  Up until that point it had all been his fault.  The lack of harvested birds, the poor work in the field, and the failure to fetch, I now see may have had a lot more to do with me.

While I experienced many sweet times with Jazz in the woods, I missed out on so much.  In fact, I’d give a million dollars for just one more hunt just to watch him do his thing.

Jazz was all about improvisation.  He made music the best way he knew how- naturally.  He was a pleasure to travel with and well-mannered in the home.  He also loved to go hunting!  In fact, I think he liked it just as much as I did, if not more.  For many years, he went with me where and when no one else would go; he stayed as long as I liked, and was glad to do that whenever I wanted to.

Now, except for the times I find an old photo, he is only an abstraction in my mind.  I imagine his infectious smile and wagging body.  I see him rolling his ball with treats in it around in the dining room of our first house.  I see him sticking his nose in a tulip.  But mostly what I see is that I didn’t appreciate him for who he was and the part he played in my life.  Jazz was much more than a dog, he was my teacher.