On the second floor of Ron Ulm's house in West Sacramento, there's a framed photo of little Gracie curled up with a stuffed animal – a mallard, to be exact – when she was about 4 months old. To the right of the photo is a plaster cast of her footprint.

Ulm can't help but grin when he looks at it.

"It came in a kit," he explained. "I think it's supposed to be for a baby's footprint or something."

Gracie might as well be his baby, but she's not. She's a 7-year-old yellow Labrador retriever. And for eight months of the year, she's a great house pet. But the time is rapidly approaching for when Gracie gets to do what she loves more than anything else: hunt.

Humans have been hunting with dogs for an estimated 20,000 years, and while we no longer need to hunt to survive, the intense bond between hunter and hunting dog has not waned.

"It's primal instinct," said dog trainer Jan Burkholder, who owns Stonewall Retrievers in Acampo. "The dogs have helped us catch game since we were cave men. It's the purest form of what dogs are with us for."

For many, it's a partnership that reaches its peak each fall during bird-hunting season.

There are birds you can hunt without dogs. Duck hunters can and do retrieve their own birds. But most people who've gone into the field or duck blind with dogs never want to hunt any other way.

"There have been times throughout my life when I've been dogless," said Dave Montz, a seventh-grade history teacher who lives in Yuba City. "It's never the same."

Part of it is that the dog finds game – in the case of upland bird hunting – that the hunter can't see or smell. Part of it is that the dog is more successful at retrieving game, particularly when it falls far from the hunter.

But the sense of partnership and pride is paramount.

Montz's first hunting dog was a black Lab named Sam. "He was my cousin's dog, but my cousin didn't hunt, so I took him out," he said.

"He was incredible. He never had any training whatsoever. I'm not even sure he was a purebred dog," Montz said. "He just had so much natural ability – he knew from Day One what he was supposed to do."

Sam's natural ability inspired Montz to train all his own dogs, which is part of what makes hunting with dogs so rewarding.

"I get the greatest joy when I take other people out, and they see how well he works after all those hours of training we put in," he said. "He'll do a great retrieve and someone will say, 'Wow, that's a great dog you have.' "

He recalls an amazing retrieve by Butch, a huge yellow Lab he used to have:

"We were pheasant hunting with about 20 guys, and we had probably half a dozen dogs out there in this big field with really thick cover. I knocked down a bird 20 or 30 yards ahead of us, and we went up to the spot, but Butch turned around and went running back where we came from. The other dogs were coming in. But two minutes later, Butch came back to us with the bird in his mouth. The bird had hit the ground and gone running back toward us – he'd run right between us."

Ulm, who also trains his own dogs, loves the partnership.

"You get to know your dog – the slightest little movements, the slightest little things that you recognize and nobody else would. And they understand the weirdest little verbal commands that nobody else would understand when you pheasant hunt," he said.

"I've taken people pheasant hunting who've never hunted with a dog before, and they're always surprised because I can tell them, 'Get ready, guns up,' because I can tell by her body language," Ulm said.

And of course, Gracie lives for the hunt.

"If I get up in the morning on a weekend and I put a hat on, she's ready to go," he said.

Not all dogs are so calm. Montz's yellow Lab, Boone, starts jumping 3 or 4 feet straight into the air whenever he sees Montz pull a gun out of his closet, and then he runs straight for the door.

Gracie loves it so much that she'll submit to what other dogs might consider a great indignity.

"She isn't the ideal color for a (duck) blind because she's light yellow," Ulm said. "So she lets me take mud and rub it all over her face, and actually cover her with grass, and she just sits there.

"It's when she is the happiest – that's for sure. Besides mealtimes," he said.