Ode to A Boat Dog: The Life of The Duke

Duke scans the water for rising fish. Photos: Kubie Brown

The first thing he did was dive off the boat. This wasn’t your normal ungainly leap or clumsy misstep over the side, but a calculated and accurate aerial assault on a hooked smallmouth my brother Sam was bringing to the net. “Get Duke,” I said, lifting the netted bass into the boat and shaking my head.

Sam put down his rod and looked down as the pup valiantly paddled back and forth, searching for the fish. Then he sighed, leaned down over the rail and grabbed Duke by the scruff of the neck, lifting him from the water and dropping him onto the deck. He looked down at the puppy as it shook itself and then looked up at the two of us with a happy, panting smile: “Some boat dog,” he said.

A Muddied Introduction

My father brought the puppy home during my sophomore year of college. It was an unusual thing as Dad wasn’t really a dog person, but he knew that my brother and I, and especially my mother, had wanted another dog in the house since our previous lab, Buddy, had gone to the big duck pond in the sky a few years before. He introduced the wriggling black bundle in his arms to me on campus after the final rugby game of the spring season.

I came off the pitch, muddy, bloody, and tired, and dad smiled and then pushed the black Labrador puppy into my arms, where it immediately began chewing on my muddy goatee. “He’s all yours,” he said.

Dad had named the puppy “The Duke of Earl” after the classic Gene Chandler song he had been listening to in the car on the way to pick him up. It became a fitting title, for as we all soon discovered that following summer, nothing could stop The Duke of Earl.

The Compleat Canine Angler

As complete fishing addicts, Sam and I spent nearly every day of the summer out on the water and wanted a dog that could keep up. We got more than we bargained for with Duke. The pup would hurl itself ahead of us on every hiking trail to every trout stream, plunging in and out of the brush like a wraith and then cannonballing into the water. He would bark and run up and down the bank of every river, roll in the mud of every bass pond, and dig up sand like an angry badger on every beach we visited.

In his puppyhood, Duke was rarely as still as he is in this photo of the author (right) and his brother.

At first, we were annoyed by Duke’s enthusiasm for defiling fishing spots. His gusto and need to be involved with whatever we were doing caused him to leap and jump on our legs as we tried to cast, and then he would plow into the water trying to chase after our flies. While this was frustrating, the pup’s love for the woods and water and indeed for the few fish we would manage to catch was infectious, and as we continued to work with him, Duke started shaping himself into a hell of a fishing dog.

Eventually Duke learned the difference between a casting rod and a thrown stick. He also learned to sit quietly and patiently by the stream, not going into the water until we had thoroughly fished the pool. As he grew, Duke became so good that we started taking him with us on different fishing expeditions. With tail wagging and tongue lolling, Duke would spend days and even weeks at a time happily sleeping in tents, swimming across massive lakes and roaring rivers, and licking the snouts of every fish we caught from trout and bass to pike, muskie, salmon, and even a few steelhead. The Duke loved everything there was about going fishing—but what he loved most were the boats.

Being a Boat Dog

Whether it was a bass boat, ski boat, drift boat, sail boat, canoe, or even my mother’s kayak, if it was floating on the water, Duke just had to be aboard. He’d sit up in the bow like a canine Captain Ahab, with the wind blowing his ears, yipping and wiggling happily as the vessel cruised across the waves. Duke’s love for watercraft surprised us a bit, since on his first boating expedition as a puppy he’d immediately swan dived overboard to try and catch the bass. Yet we soon realized that it wasn’t the boats themselves that Duke loved, but what they represented.

“Are we going fishing now?”

For Duke, stepping into a boat meant adventure. Whether we were going on an epic weeklong float down a river or just trolling around the lake for a few hours, to Duke being on a boat was always the first step to what would be an incredible journey. From the boat he got to explore islands and chase ducks and grouse. On night floats, he got to look up and howl at the moon and stars. All his happiest moments, from leaping off the bow to chase a repeatedly thrown ball, to belly-up napping in the warm sun on the stern, to sniffing and licking every wriggling fish we brought aboard, all came from being on the boat.

I also like to believe that Duke’s obsession with boats grew because that’s where his boys were happiest. Back in those days, because of work and school, Sam and I didn’t get to fish nearly as often as we wanted to. So every time we were on a boat, we were happy, excited, and completely at ease. Duke could sense that, and his mood and behavior reflected our own. He got to share in our joy when we landed a big one, barking and wagging furiously as we cheered and high-fived one another. He also consoled us, putting his big block head in our laps and looking up at us with those soulful brown eyes to let us know it was okay when the big one got away.

Over the years, there were even times when Duke’s boat love led us out of some dark places. When Sam and I would fight with one another, or were heartbroken over a break-up, or when we were just distraught or depressed from the general hardships of life, Duke would suddenly disappear. We’d look everywhere for him, calling his name and trying not to panic, then we’d find him down at the dock sitting in the bow of our fishing boat wagging his tail. It was as if he was saying, “Okay, let’s go fishing and forget our troubles for a while.”

The boat was Duke’s ticket to adventure.

As he got older, Duke’s love for being on a boat never wavered. Though he moved a bit slower on walks and wasn’t up for climbing mountains and hurling himself into the river for sticks anymore, he would still trot arthritically down to the dock and hop onto the boat anytime he saw a fishing rod in my hands. I’d look at him then as he flopped down onto the gunwale with a sigh of contentment. He’d look back with clouded eyes and a graying muzzle and his tail would thump the deck, telling me he was just fine. I would nod and steel myself for the inevitable before starting the engine and heading out onto the water.

The End and The Beginning

I was in my early 30’s and guiding for trout down in Patagonia when I got the early morning message from Sam that The Duke had died. My response to the news was standard. I stoically took my clients down the river and then returned to my cabin, where I proceeded to get rip-roaring drunk. Then I wandered into the wild of the Andes at sunset, looked up at the arriving stars, and cried it all out into the South American night.

When I returned home, I went through a few months of grieving with Sam and my parents. Then I went out and bought a Yellow Labrador puppy. I brought home the wriggling yellow bundle, whom I named Hondo after the book I was reading at the time, and pushed him into my father’s arms. Dad looked down into the face of the pup who was busily chewing his mustache and smirked. “You’ve got a lot to live up to,” he said. A few days later, Sam and I went fishing and took the pup with us on the boat.

“If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.” —Will Rogers.

I once read that the definition of heaven is a place where after you pass on, all the dogs you ever loved will run to greet you—but I don’t think The Duke will be there. Instead, he’ll be waiting for me, with tail wagging and a happy grin on his face as he sits patiently in the bow of a boat, ready to go on the next adventure.