Brannen's Hurricane

Not a day goes by that I don't think about Cain.

I had 3 other retrievers before I got the yellow Lab puppy that I have now. When I was 15 years old I helped a friend of my Dad's train his Lab and when she had some puppies, he gave me one. That was Nacoma's Chief. I was young and had very limited training knowledge and facilities but he turned out to be a fine dog. Big and strong, very willing to please me, and he made a big difference in our hunting. His only shortcoming was that I didn't know what to train him to do. I'm sure he could have been a fantastic dog if he had been trained by a good retriever man. But I was just a kid, so I taught him a little and he did the rest.

While I was in the Marines I got a Chesapeake Bay dog, Brannen's Seahorse. I listened to the advice of a professional trainer that I respected and got the dog just before I went to Okinawa, Japan for a year. The trainer told me he never started training Chessies till they were a year old. Maybe that worked for him but it didn't work out too well for me. By the time Hoss was a year old he was his own dog and had no inclination to listen to anything I had to say. He weighed between 110 and 120 pounds depending on the time of year and was as strong as a horse, so any idea of me imposing my will on him was out of the question. He and I hunted together for many years. I shot the ducks and he retrieved them. He didn't tell me how to shoot and I didn't tell him how to retrieve. Another fine dog that I don't think ever lived up to his potential because I was lacking in my training abilities.

After Hoss I went with another Lab, Brannen's Hurricane. Unfortunately his blood lines were not that of healthy dogs. He suffered from arthritis from about 4 years old till the end of his life. He had some skin problems, he went deaf when he was only 7-8 years old, he had some digestive system problems. I felt so sorry for him that he was in some sort of pain for almost his entire life. Had it not been for that, he would have been the greatest retriever the world has ever known. He was smarter than most people and had a heart as big as the Atlantic Flyway. He did everything ever asked of him. He chased cripples for 2-3 miles in the open water of the Pamlico Sound. He dove after diving cripples. His first ever hunting trip he marked 5 Ringnecks shot on the first pass in a marsh. He absolutely did it all. Other hunters and dog trainers still talk about the black dog that ruled the New River, from bank to bank. I have been around lots of retrievers. I used to gun for the AKC Field Trials in this part of the country and saw plenty of good dogs. I even ran Cain in a practice trial with a professional trainer once. He was 7 months old at the time and beat hell out of every other dog that ran. Even when he got to the point that I had to lift him in and out of the car and the boat and the blind, he never flinched, never gave in.

When you gave Cain the command 'Back' you had better be ready. Ready with binoculars to watch his progress, ready with the boat when he went out of sight in the waves, ready with your duck strap to hang the bird on.

As I sit here and type this I have tears in my eyes.

Not a day goes by that I don't think about Cain.