Anderson: Setting expectations and praising efforts, he trained his dogs — and raised his sons

Last Sunday I awoke early in a cheap motel that was overpriced, with no coffeepot and the shades pulled down on the only cafe in town. But the sun was shining and the truck stop on the way to the county fairgrounds offered a choice between French roast and ultra caffeinated. The guy ahead of me poured a cup of the high octane stuff, and I did, too.

This was a week before Father’s Day, and though my dad’s been gone a half-century, I was thinking about him. The older I get, the more that happens. So maybe time does move in one direction and memory the other.

A cutting was being held at the fairgrounds, and my horse, Olaf, was waiting in a long line of nickering horses in a white barn with a 4-H emblem painted on one end.

Olaf was named by two young Texas sisters after the character in the movie “Frozen.” He likes the handle, and I’ve stuck with it. Filling a scoop with grain, I shook his morning rations into a bucket, and then while Olaf ate his breakfast, I sat outside on rickety bleachers looking at photos on my phone.

The images were of my dad in the war, the Big One.

He had been shipped to North Africa and from there to Italy, and one snapshot of him was taken in the latter location, with dad beneath a tarp. His eyes were kind, as always belying, perhaps, his soldiering responsibilities. Maybe he was resting up for something to come. There’s no way to know.

Another photo was of dad and me, just 7 years old, on a horse, bareback, a big plowing animal. This image was taken on an Ohio farm owned by my mom’s relatives. These were Bible-toters who split their loyalties between Methodism and the Temperance Union. Dad on the other hand liked fast motorcycles and snazzy cars, topics that gained little traction with our Ohio hosts. But to my 7-year-old mind, they made him a Real Dad.

This was the third day of the cutting, and trucks and trailers were everywhere. One knee of mine rattled when I threw a saddle over Olaf’s back. Also my neck and shoulder were stiff, but they’d warm into the day. Pulling on my chaps, I climbed aboard.

Beneath the warm sun, the feeling was like that of being with an old friend.

A strawberry roan gelding, Olaf is “ate up with cow,” as the snuff chewers say about cutting horses that go all quivery and electric after a cow is separated, or “cut,” from its herd.

Staying centered in a saddle when this happens, especially while riding with a loose rein, as the rules require, and cueing the horse only with legs, boots and spurs, can be like sitting atop an 1,100-pound hummingbird while trying to guard Anthony Edwards.

But that’s the thrill, and the challenge.

Dad wasn’t a horseman, but he knew how to train a retrieving dog, and the principles of the two are the same. Knowledge is critical, as is a deft hand, as is keeping an open mind and being able to adapt.

Most important is a willingness to spend time with the animal; to put in the work.

Fortunately for me, and for my older brother, Dick, dad did that with us, showing up not only when necessary, but all of the time. He’d push hard and expect a lot. But as with the dogs, he knew when to back off and knew especially when to forgive shortcomings.

“They haven’t made a perfect one yet,” he would say, meaning dogs and people.

Last fall, my sons Trevor and Cole and I were hunting ducks, and the birds were flying. The day was cold — freezing, really — and at the end of a long morning, Trevor was lining his Labrador, Flynn, toward a greenhead he had dropped on the other side of a backwater and up a steep hill, about 150 yards distant, a tricky retrieve.

Swimming quickly to the other side, Flynn raced up the embankment, but stopped about halfway and hunted left, then right. Trevor tried sending him back again, but still Flynn hunted short.

This continued for a couple of minutes before finally, having tired of not finding the bird, Flynn sat down and from across the backwater stared at our blind.

“A little help?” he seemed to say.

“Maybe now he’ll try it my way,” Trevor said, and with a hand and voice command, he sent the dog up the hill and to the duck.

Returning with his prize, Flynn was rewarded with pets all around.

“Next retrieve like that‚" Trevor said, ”he’ll do it right the first time — maybe."

I was thinking about all of this as I loped and long trotted Olaf for an hour or so to warm us both up.

Dad rarely gave sage advice to my brother and me, distilled to pithy one-liners.

Instead he showed us, mostly by example, that high expectations, combined with encouragement and praise, regardless of outcomes, might be the best he, or anyone, could do.

That’s how he trained his dogs, anyway.

And us.

Or so I recalled on the Sunday before Father’s Day.

When our names were called, Olaf and I rode to the herd.

This wasn’t some old old plow horse I was straddling, like in the photograph.

Still, in some ways, Dad was along for the ride.

Cutting a black baldy, I lowered my rein hand, and just as quickly, Olaf went all quivery and electric.