DATE: Thursday, May 1, 1997                 TAG: 9705010475

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B2   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Guy Friddell 

                                            LENGTH:   54 lines

DEWY FIELD, PROSPECTOR PART OF INTERESTING LAB TEST

The only resident in our neighborhood who is not weary of the rain is Boomer, the chocolate Labrador retriever.

After all, water is as much his element as is land. Examine a Lab's paws, and you'll find, as likely as not, they are webbed.

The only water this Lab shuns is that in which he is scheduled to be bathed. That he loathes.

The other morning, when we emerged from the house, a golden haze hovered over the field of buttercups across the road. Yellow patches and swirls of buttercups patterned the meadow like galaxies in space. Here and there was a supernova of a dandelion.

The sun's slant rays highlighted Boomer's red undercoat. As he raced into that Elysian field, coat gleaming, he became an auburn dog.

Exuberant, he threw himself on the ground and rolled around in the still-wet grass, flinging his feet high, rollicking.

Then he arose and shook his shimmering, brown coat yellow-flecked with petals of buttercups - a sudden, new constellation, the Great Labrador, for celestial charts.

On the field's far edge, a prospector with a metal detector was moving slowly, as if he were walking in his sleep, as he swept the detector across the ground, back and forth, seeking signs of treasure. Nobody is as absorbed as a prospector on the prowl. As far as he was concerned, we could have been on the moon.

To the Lab, always on the lookout for someone to throw the ball, the prospector was a prospective playmate.

I kept throwing the ball to the other end of the field. Bringing it back, the Lab kept edging toward the prospector, who didn't even know the Lab existed. The man's mind was on deep things.

At last, the Lab made a direct run for the treasure hunter as I called, ``No, Boomer. No!''

The hunter didn't look up as the Lab capered six feet away, tossing his head with the ball in his mouth. The Lab pranced closer and dropped the ball four feet in front of the slowly advancing metal detector.

The prospector didn't lift his head. The Lab, crouching, nose to the ground, barked.

The man looked up from his detector, saw the brown dog crouched, tail wagging.

He picked up the tennis ball, more to get it out of the way than anything, and threw it about 20 feet. Joyous Boomer, fairly flying, caught it on the first bounce.

He wheeled and came racing back and dropped it at the man's feet before he could resume treasure hunting.

The man sighed, leaned down, picked up the ball and threw it, a little farther this time.

Boomer, prospecting, had found his playmate.

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