INTRODUCTION:
Dave wrote FETCH, ROOK for a chapter in his memoir, BONDED BY WATER but the chapter about Rook wasn’t included in the published book. Now, I have the opportunity to publish in the blog this wonderfully descriptive, humorous, and poignant chapter in the life of Dave & Rook, an extraordinary dog!
Tim
FETCH, ROOK
DAVE OLSON
In late 1943 when I was thirteen I wanted a real retriever, so I spent hours reading descriptions of Black Labradors. I bugged Dad until he took my brother Ken and me to the 1944 mid-winter 
Minneapolis “Sportsman’s Show.” A number of breeders had litters of puppies for sale. One was a litter of Labrador retriever pups eligible for AKC registration with champions in the lineage for $25.00. Yup, that’s right—$25. I had saved about $20 from my paper route and Dad agreed to pay the balance, so we got the pick of the litter. I named him “Kabekona Rook” because we owned a cabin on Lake Kabekona in Northern Minnesota and Rook because he was as black as a crow. We called him Rook.
It didn’t take long before Rook and I had a relationship of unconditional love like “Red and Rover” in the comics. I bought a book on the care and training of retrievers but I didn’t have to teach Rook to retrieve. Lake Nokomis was a block from home in Minneapolis and as soon as the water warmed up I took Rook and a stick to the lake and tossed it out 30—40 feet from shore, “Fetch, Rook.” He leaped into the lake and quickly returned with the stick to drop it in my hand. He took to retrieving like a duck to water. He was a natural!
In August our family moved to Ketchikan and early in the fall of ’45, during our second season of hunting in Alaska, Dad, my brother Ken, a friend Allan Martini and I took a long weekend on my dad’s cruiser, the Audace, up thirty miles to the head of Carroll Inlet with a wide wild river flowing into its tide flats. Carroll Inlet featured the nearest best water bird hunting near Ketchikan.
We went ashore at daybreak to be on the tide flat for the early shooting. Allan and I teamed up with Rook to scramble up the river hoping for an easy kill. Soon we shot a goose down in the middle of the river. Rook plunged into the fast flowing current to go after it, and disappeared around a bend into rapids. We ran down river to catch up with him. We didn’t, and we were afraid for Rook’s safety. Frowns turned to smiles when what’da ya know, there was Rook dragging his big bird out of the water.
On later hunts at Carroll Inlet, Rook came up with his own strategy for faster retrieval. At the head of the inlet, at low tide, the flat expanded to four or five acres. In the early morning we had one chance at bringing down geese as they flew down from up river, low over the tide flat, on their way out to the ocean for a day of foraging. We let them fly over and slightly past us before firing because the “word” was their feathers and down were so thick the #4 birdshot be-bees wouldn’t penetrate hitting head on. So the birds came down some distance after passing over us. After Rook observed this, he stayed with us behind drift stumps on the flat until the geese were heard honking up river on their way to flying over us. Before they arrived he would leave us to run out on the flat away from the honking where he would sit, tail wagging, nose in the air, waiting for a goose to come down. If the first one came down in one of the river outflows Rook was quickly in the water swimming after it. If it came down on the sand and gravel flat near him, instantly, before even a wounded goose could move, Rook had him and was joyfully dragging it back to us. We saw one bird almost achieve justice by falling on him.
It wasn’t only during hunting season that Rook figured things out. During my dad’s 2nd year as pastor of First Lutheran Church in Ketchikan, Rook was there to answer Pastor Roy’s prayer. Setting the scene, a door from the living/dining room in the apartment led to Dad’s study. When nobody else was home, Dad often left the door open to the living quarters. One day a church member came knocking at the apartment door to see him.
Roy let him in and the gentleman left his cap on a chair next to the door. After getting comfortable in the study, it turned out the man just wanted to talk forever about nothing serious on an afternoon when Dad had more pressing business in mind. Rook was with them in the office. Pastor Roy was eventually praying to himself for a way to send the parishioner on his way without offending him. Rook got up, trotted into the apartment and returned with the visitor’s cap, to lay it on his lap. He promptly apologized for overstaying his welcome and left. Pastor Roy forever after cited this as divine intervention. Today’s dog fanciers would attribute it to canine empathy. My guess: Rook was just dropping a hint he wanted out; or it was time to retrieve the newspaper from its box down on the avenue below- a job he had been trained to do and loved doing.
Nineteen-forty-seven began with Rook, as part of our family, on the steamer Prince George for the voyage to Seattle and a new life in Tacoma, Washington.
Dad had rented a two-story home with dormers, a low pitched roof and on a quiet street. Harry’s Market was two blocks away. While we lived in that home Mom often walked down to Harry’s Market with Rook. He would patiently wait for Mom to do her shopping and then accompany her home. Harry got to know Rook well. On one of these visits, Harry, who did his own butchering, suggested giving Rook a beef bone to carry home and Mom said. “Okay.” When they got home Rook buried the bone in a 10 x 12 ft. fallow garden area in back of the garage.
When Ken and I got wind of what had been going on—we got a bright idea. We talked to Harry about seeing if Rook could make a two-block retrieval. Harry loved it as offering a diversion to show off to customers. All we had to do was take Rook to the store. Harry showed the bone to Rook and all of us said, “Harry’s Bone.” Then we went home with Rook proudly carrying his bone. By arrangement Harry set aside another bone. Shortly after Rook had buried that bone, we said, “Rook, fetch Harry’s Bone.” He dashed off lickety-split for Harry’s Market. Harry was waiting for him, gave him the bone and Rook took off for home to proudly present it to Ken and me. Of course, we gave it back for him to contentedly chew and bury. Ken and I went on to other things and forgot about it.
But not Rook. Mom told us months later she had become curious about what Rook was doing outside with his time. Harry told her. He said, “Oh, Rook has been coming down to the store on his own. He sits at the door until I send him home with a bone, or he gets tired of waiting and leaves.” As soon as she got home, Mom took a dig in that garden and found it littered with buried bones. Thereafter we called it the bone yard.
One sunny afternoon, playing with Rook, Ken and I came up with a traffic-stopper retrieval that made him a neighborhood celebrity; and thereafter, because he knew it, ever eager to show-off his prowess. The setting of the 
house and garage made it possible to teach Rook a way to get on our house roof and retrieve a stick casually tossed up from our front yard. After he got the hang of it, all you had to do was toss the stick and, before you could say “Fetch, Rook,”—he disappeared behind the house to reappear coming over the roof ridge in less than half-a-minute. Neighbors rang our bell to ask us to entertain their friends and guests with Rook’s free one-minute one-act dog show.
Rook roaming free in Ketchikan was one thing; a big black dog roaming free in a city was another thing. That change didn’t work well for Rook. Ken and I went to Alaska to work in the summers; Dad went downtown to Central Lutheran Church and Rook was no longer Jerry’s and Timmy’s play mate. Mom was left to take care of feeding Rook. Rook, a dog not to be ignored, got into trouble in the house and in the neighborhood.
Sometime during the summer of 1950, when Ken and I were away, Dad visited with a congregation member who owned a farm in Mt. Rainier’s foothills. Could the Estonian family living on the farm take Rook? Yes. Dad gave Rook to the church member. I was heartbroken to find Rook gone when I got home. But there was no recovery.
I went up to visit Rook when I could during that fall. He was still the same old Rook retrieving sticks with a leap off the dock into the lake. Once I brought him home with me so cousin Jake, friend Charley Martin, Ken and I could take him along on a pheasant hunting trip to Eastern Washington. Taking him back to the farm was not easy. My last visit was in the early summer of 1952.
By that time I knew I was soon to be on my way to a government job in Washington, D. C. Totally neglected over the winter, Rook had grown fat and feeble. He seemed to hardly know me. It broke my heart again. I heard later he disappeared to die sometime within that year. He was only eight years old. Tim says, “He died of a broken heart.” I know, and it still hurts.
Ah, but what a life Rook lived and how fortunate I am to have shared those years.
To view previous Olson Family Scrapbook post – click here
Oh yes. I do remember Brother Ken telling me of the adventures of Rook, the black lab. He often told of how when he was boy his family moved to Ketchikan and the family with 4 boys and a big black LAB named ROOK lived in the church which served as the parsonage, too, and what an active time it was for all of you. He tells of the “Churchladies ” coming to retrieve something out of your refrigerator to find boys running around in their skivvies. Those were the days. Thanks for posting, Tim. I also, to note, lived in a house very near your house in No Tacoma near Alder street. My house was on the corner of Lawrence and 29th, only a block or so away. It is still a nice part of town. Ken and I realized we had so many connections.
I enjoyed and I don’t usually read dog stories 😊
What wonderful writing. Made me laugh and made me tear up. What a dog!