Free The Dog Who Wouldn't Be by Farley Mowat

try to maneuver his belly over the fifth. But the fifth would manage to get free, and scuttle away. Whereupon Mutt would have to abandon all his prisoners; they would all dash off, and he would have it all to do over again. He was about at the end of his tether when we came to his rescue, and it was the only time on a hunting trip that I ever saw him really harassed. How he managed to get those five struggling birds to the island in the first place I do not know.
    He had long since perfected his diving technique, and could attain depths of five feet and stay under for as long as a minute. He soon learned, too, that in the case of a deep-diving duck it was sometimes possible to tire it out by waiting on the surface at the point where it would most probably rise, and then forcing it under again before it had time to breathe.
    Only once did I see him beaten by a duck – and that time it was no real duck, but a western grebe. Mutt had already retrieved a bufflehead for us, and had gone back out in the belief that a second bird awaited his attention. We could not persuade him otherwise. Knowing how useless it was to argue with him, we let him have his way, although the grebe was quite uninjured – at least by any shot of ours.
    Grebes seldom fly, but they dive like fish, and Mutt spent the best part of an hour chasing that bird while Father and I concealed ourselves in the duck blind, and tried to muffle our mirth. It would never have done to let Mutt know we were amused. He did not appreciate humor when he was its butt.
    He got more and more exasperated and, though the water was ten or fifteen feet deep, he finally gave up trying to tire the grebe and decided to go down after it. But he was not built for really deep diving. His buoyancy was too great, and he was badly ballasted. At the third attempt he turned-turtle under the water and popped to the surface upside down. Then and only then did he reluctantly come ashore. We set off at once to hunt grouse so that he could get the taste of defeat outof his mouth, and otherwise relieve himself of about a gallon of lake water.
    Word of Mutt’s phenomenal abilities soon got around, for neither my father nor I was reticent about him. At first the local hunters were skeptical, but after some of them had seen him work, their disbelief began to change into a strong civic pride that, in due time, made Mutt’s name a byword for excellence in Saskatchewan hunting circles.
    Indeed, Mutt became something of a symbol – a truly western symbol, for his feats were sometimes slightly exaggerated by his partisans for the benefit of unwary strangers – particularly if the strangers came out of the east. It was an encounter between just such a stranger and some of Mutt’s native admirers that brought him to his greatest and most lasting triumph – a success that will not be forgotten in Saskatoon while there are birds, and dogs to hunt them.
    It all began on one of those blistering July days when the prairie pants like a dying coyote, the dust lies heavy, and the air burns the flesh it touches. On such days those with good sense retire to the cellar caverns that are euphemistically known in Canada as beer parlors. These are all much the same across the country – ill-lit and crowded dens,redolent with the stench of sweat, spilled beer, and smoke – but they are, for the most part, moderately cool. And the insipid stuff that passes for beer is usually ice cold.
    On this particular day five residents of the city, dog fanciers all, had forgathered in a beer parlor. They had just returned from witnessing some hunting-dog trials held in Manitoba, and they had brought a guest with them. He was a rather portly gentleman from the state of New York, and he had both wealth and ambition. He used his wealth lavishly to further his ambition, which was to raise and own the finest retrievers on the continent, if not in the world. Having watched his own dogs win the Manitoba