With A getting his license, and a tiny bit of my time freed up, I was determined to get back to spending more quality time with the dogs and get them back on track.

We got a good start in the fall, following a weekend of basic training, but these last few months have been dismal for them. Just trying to get them exercised in between work and all the kids’ activities has been difficult.

I’ve been trying to spend a little bit of time each day engaging their brains, even if it was just retrieving balls chucked down the hallway in the house, but I knew they were energetic and bored, which is a terrible combination for robust, smart dogs.

To kick-start things, we headed to another Airedale event for the weekend. As opposed to the fall training session, this was more of a relaxed, fun weekend. It promised plenty of hunting opportunities for Duncan, and several introductory/beginner sessions for Henson.

I always go into these things with a good case of nerves, as they’re dogs, and I never know how they’re going to respond to a new environment, new dogs, or new people.

Safe to say, Duncan had the time of his life. The first two birds he was set on didn’t even make it out of the grass before he pounced on them and retrieved them. Watching him come alive, seeing all his senses turn on, and him forging ahead, confident and enthusiastic is always a joy and if there is a way that Steve can be observing all of this, I am sure he is beaming with pride over his dog’s performance.

Seeing how my grumpy old man dog can turn into a happy hunting machine makes me determined to suck it up and get him practice birds and keep working on the skills that he has.

Dunc also had the opportunity to run a scent trail for a raccoon. While this was one of his best skills when Steve was alive and training him, one that he’d already earned a junior title in, it’s one I haven’t had him practice since Steve died.

I’ll spare you all the goriest of details, but it involves using artificial (or maybe it’s real and collected, I don’t know) scent to make a trail. In my opinion, these scents shouldn’t be handled in anything less than full hazmat gear.

They are concentrated, potent, and made to be long lasting. In other words, they are exactly the kind of thing that klutzy people like me shouldn’t be handling unless I want to smell like raccoon all day.

At any rate, Dunc acted like he’d never missed a day, picked up the scent immediately, homed in on the “raccoon” in the tree and did exactly what he was supposed to do. Then, he did it again for good measure.

As I photographed him jumping in the air, trying to reach the bait, it looked like he was doing a dance of joy. That was Dunc’s experience: back in the saddle and living his best life, without missing a beat.

Then, I had my Hens. The night Hens came home with us, we stayed in a hotel and after preparing for bed, I came out to find puppy Hens snuggled up in my bed.

Steve and Dunc were already settled in the other bed (I’d learned the hard way that I was invading territory if I tried to come between them) so Steve said, “Well I guess that one’s yours.” With Steve dying only a few months later, by default, Hens became mine. While I am technically Dunc’s owner, he will never be “my” dog. We’ve agreed to coexist, but dog people know what I mean, when I say that he is not “mine.”

At any rate, Hens is at an in-between stage. He’s not a puppy anymore, but he’s not a well-trained hunting machine either. His size, overly abundant and poorly directed enthusiasm, and his general lack of focus made it a difficult weekend and he engaged in some less than stellar behavior, all of which I knew was my fault. As we laid on the hotel bed that night, I looked at his sad, confused face, and I knew exactly how he felt.

Not sure what the expectations are, not sure what tools I need to get the job done, not sure how I should act or what I need to do in any situation, every step feeling like it’s the wrong one. Before losing Steve, I’d always felt like Dunc. Like I was doing exactly the things I was meant to do, that between us we had the skills to make things work, like we could keep all our ducks, or chukars, in a row.

As I watched Dunc make all the right moves with an experienced hunting partner, I realized that I was looking at a metaphor for our marriage. Each of us sure of ourselves, functioning independently, both of us working together to achieve a common goal, and yet everything we were doing made absolutely no sense without our partner.

Now, like Hens, I know how to do a few things, and I know I should be doing other things, but I just no longer know how to tie it all together so that it works, and without a partner to “work the field with,” there just doesn’t seem to be much of a point in running around in circles.

Just like Hens, I’ve placed in this terribly overwhelming situation, through no fault of my own, and I’ve got to try to figure it out alone, because no one around me seems to know how to help me either.

The next day, I took Hens away from the hive of activity and we found a quiet field where we could stick with the things he knew and worked on them. It wasn’t long before his ears perked up and he got his bounce back. As I loaded him up for the long ride home, I promised him that we’d do better next time. Maybe it’s time to pivot with him. Maybe his path isn’t heading in the original direction that we thought. Maybe he will have to find meaning and purpose in a different direction.

Continuing to extend the metaphor to myself, I should be able to do the same thing. As with most things lately, though, it’s a lot easier said than done.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing columnist who appears weekly in the Times News.