One amazing dog

Molly is twelve, rather old for a dog of her size.  But she has been the best dog.  She's not perfect...there was the broken tail, the vitamin K shot after eating rat poison, the $1200 emergency stomach surgery, and some bookorder checks from students' parents that got eaten and had to be replaced...

She's a mutt: a mix of lab, retriever, husky and German shepherd.  As a guard dog she lets us know when someone comes into the driveway, yet she's friendly to visitors.  She's always been good with babies but will let our big kids know when they're pushing the limit of her patience.

She is so good with all our animals.  She has never tried to injure any of our creatures (though she sometimes thinks it is great fun to dart suddenly into a flock of chickens and watch them scatter).

Years ago, she learned how to retrieve birds (ruffed grouse) during the couple hours we were hunting with friends.  All we had to do was show her a dead bird and tell her to "go fetch" when the gun went off.  She proudly retrieved several birds with the softest mouth.  She has always loved to fetch.

Recently, she's amazed us with another accomplishment.

We have ten free range laying ducks, VERY free range ducks.  They spend a lot of time in the woods behind our house and lay their eggs in random spots, usually underneath trees and branches.   It's an egg hunt every morning to collect their eggs.  About 2-3 weeks ago, I saw a crow swoop down and take off with a recently laid egg.  We had to start waking up earlier to beat the crows to the eggs.  But the ducks lay throughout the morning and the crows have a lot more time to be out watching for eggs than we do.  A couple days ago I saw two crows make off with two more eggs.  One crow had the audacity to walk along with the ducks into the woods, waiting for them to lay.  (Thanks to Matt's steady hand and the 17 gauge, we have one less crow to worry about.)

How does Molly come into this?

Well... she has started to go into the woods, collect eggs, and leave them on the lawn by the porch for us.  It took us a while to realize what she was doing, because she deposits them gently on the grass and then walks off.  I had just been saying to Matt, "Wouldn't it be nice if we could train Molly to collect eggs?"  Amazingly, she trained herself.