The Things We Learn While Fly Fishing the Outdoors (or, Dogs Are Smarter Than Children?)

If the outdoors teaches us anything, it’s that we’re basically slow, soft-skinned food for almost any predator larger than us.

Still, if that thinking’s a little on the grim side for you, then consider the possibility there’s still a lot of useful stuff we can learn from the outdoors.

In fact, in the following (wholly awesome) essay by P.J. O’Rourke is that it’s easier to train gun dogs than kids:

I have three badly behaved children and a damn good bird dog. My Brittany spaniel, Millie (age seven), is far more biddable and obedient than my daughters, Muffin (eleven) and Poppet (nine), and has a better nose than my son, Buster (five). Buster does smell, but in his case it’s an intransitive verb.

My dog is perdition to the woodcock and ruffled grouse we hunt hereabouts and death itself to the pen-raised Huns, chukars, and quail she encounters at the local shooting club. Millie hunts close, quarters well, points beautifully, is staunch to wing and shot, and retrieves with verve. My children…are doing okay in school, I guess. They look very sweet—when they’re asleep.

As my family was growing, I got a lot of excellent advice about discipline, responsibility, respect, affection, and cultivation of the work ethic. Unfortunately this advice was from dog trainers and was directed to my dog. In the matter of child rearing there was also plenty of advice, all of it contradictory—from family and family-in-law, wife, wife’s girlfriends, pediatricians, nursery school teachers, babysitters, neighbors and random old ladies on the street, plus Dr. Spock, Dr. Phil, and, for all I know, Dr Pepper: Spank them/Don’t spank them. Make them clean their plate/Keep them from overeating. Potty train them at one/Send them to Potty Training Camp at fourteen. Hover over their every activity/Get out of their faces. Don’t drink or smoke during pregnancy/Junior colleges need students too. And none of this advice works when you’re trying to get the kids to quit playing video games and go to bed.

It took me years to realize that I should stop asking myself what I’m doing wrong as a parent and start asking myself what I’m doing right as a dog handler.

You’ll want to read the whole thing. Every word.

With a toddler in the house already testing every rule (and climbing through or over every safety barrier), I can see the writing on the wall. I’d better invest in duck decoys – and fast.

See you on the training field, Tom Chandler.