Some dogs are easy to find, and some of them aren’t. A recent newspaper story says a dog named Salsa will find your pooch for sure, and all she needs is $100 per hour.

Salsa is an eight-year-old golden retriever who knows how to handle the money. She hunted a cairn terrier for 25 hours, and the news story implies she still hasn’t found it. I know how that goes, but I’ve never paid a dog quite so much.

I remember a man from Virginia about 10 years ago, who billed federal agencies $700,000 over two years for his bomb-sniffing dogs. The agencies claimed this fellow cheated them by providing dogs that couldn’t find an elephant in a pool room. Then, they planted 50 pounds of dynamite and 15 pounds of plastic explosives in numerous cars, and the dogs walked on by without even sniffing.

I know how that goes. Each dog has his day, and nobody knows when that’s going to be. I’ve seen enough pointers who won’t point and retrievers who can’t swim to know we have to give the trainers a little bit of slack.

Besides, we can’t hold a man responsible for his dog’s mistakes. When someone gives me flak about my dogs, I always say, “Okay. Let me see your pooch.” That’s when we learn these people don’t have a dog. Or if they do, they leave it at home.

When I look back on all of the dogs I’ve trained, I realize some of them were smarter than I am. The rest probably weren’t.

Dogs are creatures of habit. If they don’t want 50 pounds of dynamite, they aren’t going to understand it the first time they see it. The Virginia man’s dogs were probably trained with a few pounds of explosives. If they find a lot, it might blow them away.

I’ve seen dogs track wounded birds for hundreds of yards and finally find them. I’ve watched other dogs run over dead game with no indication that they’ve smelled a thing.
My old English setter, Goldie, was a really good example. She would do something totally amazing and then follow it with something stupid – just so I wouldn’t start expecting too much.

Goldie was trained to ride in the back of my two-door Ford. She would watch me open the driver’s side door, and then she would turn to the right and jump in the back. This worked fine until one day when I decided to let her in on the passenger side. Goldie jumped into the front seat – then she turned right and crashed into the windshield.

I probably could have taught her how to get in on either side. But why should I bother – if I can’t remember which door to open, what can we expect from my dog?

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