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Long live the Mighty Dude
Long Live the Mighty Dude 06/12/209 10/08/2022
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With great sadness I write to tell you that The Dude has passed on.
We brought the little fella from a young guy up in Kiddington Oxfordshire . Mrs Sideshow and I drove up to have a look at this litter in late January on a frosty evening.
They opened the door and out spilled this unruly mob that then proceeded to run riot around the small kitchen. I liked a little black dog but since I had had the choice on what type of dog we would be getting I left the final choice to the good wife. She chose a little brown guy with a blaze of grey on his chest and green eyes. He was the only one that came ad sat down in front of her, as if to say "Hello who are you"!
We went away and came back to pick him up at the end of February 2010. We named him "The Dude" after the Big Lebowski, and brought him home. I needed to leave the next day to work down in Devon for a weekend. Leaving saying see you Monday evening. I got a call on Sunday afternoon from a very distressed Mrs Sideshow saying that the dog had her rapped around her little finger. He had jumped up on the sofa, this was not allowed so she had told him off and stuck him in his grate as punishment! After 30 minutes she went to let him out and he turned his back on her. Leaving the door open she walked off to carry on with her work, thinking that he would be out soon. 6 HOURS later he slowly stuck his head around the door. But not before I had received that phone call.
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So we had this little guy in our lives. I had brought him for company and as a shooting dog. Id only ever had cattle dogs and Labs before so having a cocker is a whole different kettle of fish. Training for one is so very different. Not that I did much of that as again Mrs Sideshow stepped up to the plate and sorted most of that. She even managed to train him to bring a pair of shoes. Not just any pair but the correct ones. "Shoe where's my shoe"? Then send him again and nine times out of ten he would be there with the right one.
The two things that Duded loved most Swimming and Birds...anything that flew. Being a part time game keeper on a shoot he got to see a lot of birds especially at the start of each season when we got the poults in and had them in the pens.
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Swimming he took to in his first season. You would get tired standing waiting for him to finish before he would. Taking him to the beach and he would be off to France if you where not careful.
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When out shooting he had a awesome noise and was one strong brave, hardy little bugger. On his first shoot he jumped a barbed wire fence, he briefly got hooked on the wire but continued to run around after so I thought nothing of it. It was not until I came down the next day and gave him a pat and he whimpered that I realised something was up. Lifting his hind leg revealed that he had opened up his stomach and you could see intestines. Off to the vet. He came to hate the vet.....I don't blame him.
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He was never aggressive, never chewed up the furniture and very really barked. The not barking thing saw us running around a few times thinking he had got out only to find he had followed one of us into the garage and we had closed the door on him. He would then sit there in the dark till it was opened not a peep.
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He also loved car trips. He would in his bed in the back seat of the truck and stare out the window. If Birds where seen it was all on. A dog harness stopped him from joining me in the front seat. But I could still wind him up by saying "Look Dude, BIRDIES"!
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We had many great adventures with the little guy. If you ever see in the news that the Eiffel tower is on a lean.....it was because Dude took a piss on the side of it.
As a gun dog he was awesome at retrieving. Ive seen some very good dogs. But not many that would pick a birds from under water. (A hen pheasant that fell in a river) He also picked Woodcock first go, which most dogs don't like as they apparently smell strange. Where most other dogs would give up as it was to thick or to many blackberry's or sting nettles Dude would be in there. He even made Mr September of the BASC gun dog calender. He had many great retrieves and days out from evenings duck shooting, days out on the pigeons to big two fifty bird days. His first retrieve ever was a drake and his last was a partridge. One of the most memorable days out was a big shoot that we had been invited to, on the Benham estate. We had had a really grate day out. Good people sporting birds and Dude had picked a lot. After the last drive the we were all standing around talking as the pikers up did there sweep through. I just had Dude loose. Next minute he's standing in the middle of us with a bird. Cool thanks mate, nice one......seven birds later and we got the message. He just loved doing it. Open the gun safe and it was all on!!
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Age finally started to catch up with him last year when his kidneys started to fail and we also found a hart murmur.
We changed his diet and got it all under control but he was on borrowed time. I also started to notice that he seemed to be losing his marbles. Which lead to a few funny moments.
I was changing the hingers on our glass kitchen door. I had the door off and leaning against the wall next to the opening. Dude need to go out for a pee so I let him out the front door when he'd done his bit he came back in and stood in front of the glass door waiting for it to open even though to the left he could have walked on in. He looked up at me with a look of "hurry up stop mucking about me beds in there"! When I pushed him to one side and he saw that it was open he sort of looked back at me with WTF have you done to the place now!
It wasn't the loss of marbles the hart or the kidneys that stopped him. It was his back legs.
I hope Dude that that water is warm and you can catch up to those birds now that you have wings.
We are sure going to miss you the house feels so empty with out you Dudeing about.
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