Over the past year, I’ve been training Gunney, a wirehaired pointing griffon, how to hunt birds. He has a sweet and goofy disposition; for the most part, our time together has been full of joy. But several phases of the training process have required putting Gunney in moments of discomfort. Rattlesnake aversion training was one of them.
When the handler hit the collar to simulate a rattlesnake bite, Gunney, normally a quiet dog, howled in a way I’d never heard before. In the moment, I was silent; this is my response.•
I watched twenty dogs
go before my pup
and even so
was not prepared
for how he bucked and yelped
and yelped
when the rattler
who’d been defanged
lurched toward him
and the man in the Stetson
pressed the button
his collar sang
and a minute later
when they brought the rattler
toward him a second time
for good measure
how he jumped electric
So often we endure pain hoping
to prevent more of it
and even so
I did not realize
how hard it would be
to show this one pure thing
a reason to be afraid
This poem appears in Issue 32 of Alta Journal.
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