At last, a retriever!

Our standard poodle has never gotten into the water in his life except for a bath, even though poodles are water retrievers. Today all things seem to be coming together however, because TootSweet came galloping in from the back yard carefully bringing a dead dove in his jaws. Apparently one of the supposed survivors of a crash into the sliding doors managed to make it several yards away before expiring, and the Tooters, as we call him, decided his job was to bring the bird back to the house and hand it over. It was an amazing thing: soft mouth, the whole retriever business, and a singular happiness at being able to offer up his prized dead dove. That does it--I am for sure going to learn how to dress the darned things and freeze them because we have too much food committing suicide and going to waste.