For those who place stock in divine providence, it was a match made in heavenor at least at the Longmont Humane Society.
All Kent and Gale Sperry of Northglenn wanted was some nice little pup, a lap dog perhaps, to replace the one they’d recently lost. What they got instead was an 85-pound bundle of muscle with a paddle tail that raises welts on table legs and a passion for the chase that causes the Sperrys to spell out words such as d-u-c-k and g-o-o-s-e in their conversation less the household erupt in pandemonium.
For Kent, this chance connection in March 2006 opened his eyes to a degree of hunting enjoyment he never dreamed existed. To a Labrador retriever called Gentle Ben, it meant life itself.
“I was looking for a dog with a light-colored face, and all the others were dark,” said Gale, who struggles with her eyesight. “He looked like a nice little dog.”
Thing was, the “nice little dog” was a whopping 90-pounder at the time. He also was covered with bandages and scars, that magnificent tail a bloody mess from an uncertain time loose in the streets before the Humane Society folks got their hands on him.
“Then I felt sorry for him,” Gale said of a situation that likely would have resulted in the animal, whose age is estimated at 6 1/2, being put down.
The light face part is true enough. Although technically a yellow Lab, Ben’s tint approaches poodle-white, which makes him look bigger than he is and gives him a ghostly glow when day breaks over a duck pond.
“It took two months and a lot of trips to the vet to heal him up, and we fell in love with him right away,” Kent recalled. “He was just so happy-go-lucky despite all that had happened to him.”
The name is an abbreviation from the too-stuffy “Benton” awarded him at the pound. Gale added the Gentle part because “it just fits.”
It’s the part that comes next that really warms the hearts of those of us who thrill to the chase for wild-winged things such as ducks, geese and pheasants. Purely by chance, Kent took Ben for a walk in a field where a neighbor was working his own bird dog.
“Ben began to respond immediately to all the whistles and commands. It was obvious he knew what it was all about.”
A call to his brother, Steve, a veteran bird-dog trainer, confirmed what Kent suspected.
“Ben knew all the commands. It then became a matter of me learning them. He didn’t need to learn to hunt with me. I needed to learn to hunt with him,” said Kent, who grew up in Colorado Springs an avid hunter.
The extent to which that was true was fully revealed on a quick trip to a shooting preserve, with Steve as coach.
“Ben did phenomenally well on pheasant and chukar,” Kent marveled.
On the next outing, for ducks, “He didn’t hesitate a bit. He went right into the water for a retrieve.”
The real test came on a goose hunt, when a wounded bird sailed far over a ridge.
“Ben began working after him right away. He body-slammed the goose and brought it right back to me,” Kent said. “That’s when I knew I had a really great dog.
“Deep snow, blind retrieves. Nothing’s a problem for him.”
The truly impressive part, Kent said, is the dog’s enduring enthusiasm.
“He absolutely lives to hunt. The night before, he literally sleeps on top of the gear to make sure we won’t leave him.”
For a dog who came thisclose to not living at all, it seems the perfectly natural thing to do.
Charlie Meyers: 303-954-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com
