Barney Came and Stayed

There is a neat story that goes with this pigeon. It all started when my wife and a friend of hers
from Tennessee, decided to meet here in Wisconsin and
train their Golden Retrievers to retrieve birds to hand. The lady from Tennessee said she had a couple of pigeons that she will bring for the dogs to retrieve.

This next part sounds a little cruel but as things go in this sport of field training, this particular story doesn't have a bad ending, well almost.

When training field dogs, it is a must to have live birds and ones that will actively participate by flapping their wings as they are thrown in the air. But to keep the birds over a period of time for training, it is necessary to pull out their flight feather and then tie their legs together so they when they are thrown in the air, wildly flapping their wings, not actually flying, they won't fly away and they can't run when the hit the ground.

The whole idea is to train puppies before they get any bad habits like eating the birds or crushing them. Puppies usually have no idea that this is or could be a meal for them. Their instincts tell them that when they see this bird flying through the air they want to go and get. The trick then is to train them to bring it back to the handler without destroying it, that is killing it in this case. In an actual hunting situation, the bird is already dead, you then want the dog to bring it back without stopping to eat it or crushing it with their jaws.

So, now, after many weeks of training and many hand thrown flights of these birds, and dogs retrieving them, only one survived out of two that made the trip. One got crunched by an adult dog that the handler said he had a soft mouth. Right!

Anyway, when the training was done and the bird was left to grow his flight feather back, we thought it would be a nice reward for him, having survived the riggers training, to be released so he could go his own way.

When the time came to open the cage and release him for the last time so he could fly away forever, he flew around the farm for a few minutes then came back and landed on the roof of the house. He has been here ever since.

Is he stupid or just doesn't care to travel to the next farm where there are other pigeons is anybodies guess. He is welcome to stay as long as he wants even though he poops on our deck every morning. We think maybe he is here for a reason. Maybe not to. Life is strange