I see the Obamas plan on getting a dog for the White House. Newspaper stories say the family’s choice has been narrowed to a Labradoodle or a Portuguese Water Dog. One of the Obama children has some allergies, and those two breeds cause fewer problems than most.

Labradoodle is a relatively new breed that has become popular in recent years. I always thought of Labradors as working dogs and Poodles as show-off dogs when I was growing up. Nobody thought of those two breeds mixing together.

That’s what we do now, though: Mix them together. A person never knows if his dog is going to retrieve ducks or dance around the table when breakfast is over.

We could ask my old dog, Ben, about that if he was still alive. Ben was an English Setter of respectable breeding, but uncertain performance was one of his shortcomings.

Besides the usual flaws one expects from a bird dog – rolling in manure, eating birds, deafness in both ears – Ben developed the disconcerting habit of running away every time there was a thunderstorm. That old dog could tolerate gunfire of any magnitude, but there was something about thunder that launched him into orbit.

Ben got so nervous when the barometric pressure went down that you could forecast the weather by the expressions on his face. One minute Ben would be sitting in the yard, and the next he would be gone to who-knows-where.

Sometimes we found him at the neighbor’s, hiding under the porch. Several times people called, and we would go pick him up – miles away.

Once, he got caught in a coyote trap and was returned by a sheep rancher. Another time he went down to the golf course and walked a few holes with the boys.

If anyone was raised by a village, it was Ben. He was gone about as much as he was home. We put our name and phone number on the old setter’s collar so folks could call us when they found him, and they always did. I guess you couldn’t blame them.

I told my friends about the phone number on Ben’s collar and they said, “You need to wipe that off.” I’ve thought about that old dog many times over the years. I blame myself for many of his faults.
You can’t keep a dog steady on point if you blaze away at every bird that flushes. And you can’t demand obedience if you don’t spend some time teaching the dog what is expected.

On the other hand, I never encouraged Ben to run off each time he sensed a change in the weather. And you would think an animal that could trail birds through a frozen swamp could find his master in a 20-acre cow pasture.

I’ve seen lots of dogs over the years and owned quite a few. Each had a certain amount of ability and a few shortcomings. I’m not much of a dog trainer, but I know one thing for sure: No matter what happens, you don’t want one that was raised by a village.

Readers with questions or comments for Roger Pond may write to him in care of this publication.