Ziggy was like a duck out of water, when she went to live with Lindy Burch on the 80 Ranch in Weatherford, TX, five years ago. As a Labrador retriever pup, Ziggy had more in common with our fine-feathered friends than with Burch’s champion cutting horses and border collies.

Today, however, there is no mistaking that 80 Ranch is Ziggy’s turf. “She’s the head honcho and every dog and every person knows that,” pointed out Burch, the first woman to win the NCHA Open Futurity, as well as the NCHA Open World Championship, and the only woman ever elected as president of the National Cutting Horse Association.

“We call her “the Black Angel,” Burch added. “She can do no wrong.”

Ziggy had some big paws to fill. Burch’s Jack Russell terrier, the late Snoopy, had his own bank account and flew first class to star in dog food commercials on the West Coast. Pete, Burch’s now retired 15-year-old border collie, was a legendary cow dog in cutting circles. But one gets the impression that ranch work is too mundane for Ziggy, although she gave it a try as a pup. On that occasion, a cow broke her right front leg. Now she steers clear of cattle and horses, but enjoys daily dips in their ample rock water troughs.

Burch’s friends Jerry and Melinda Black, of Oakdale, CA, bred Ziggy out of their good bitch Annie and shipped her to Texas. Expecting a chunky English-type pup, Burch was surprised by the lithe female with a “skinny” nose that trotted out of the crate. Later she was to learn that Ziggy is an American field trial Lab.

“I thought, well, too bad. I got the weird one,” Burch remembered. “But it turned out that she’s been a great dog. It’s just like great cutting horses. I’ve been blessed with many that I’ve gotten to ride, but you can’t make them. They are either great or they’re not.”

Burch took Ziggy to her friend Judy Aycock, a leading dog handler who lives in Sanger, Texas. “Judy said that she’s never seen a dog want to (retrieve) more than Ziggy, and she’s been training them for 35 or 40 years,” noted Burch, who would leave Ziggy in Sanger for a month at time, while she was in training.

Ziggy’s first duck hunt took place on the bay in Port Aransas during a winter storm. She had already retrieved all the dead ducks, but a wounded bird was swimming away from the shore and whenever Ziggy approached, it would dive.

“This went on and on for what seemed like an eternity to me,” said Burch. “Ziggy had been out there swimming in circles for a long time. I didn’t want her to drown in front of my eyes. I had my whistle to call her in, but it was storming so much, she couldn’t hear it.

“Now I’m really getting worried and I’m taking my waders off so that I can swim to her, and the guide is running for the boat because he sees I’m going to go in. By then, the bay is so choppy, I can’t see anything. Then here comes Ziggy up out of that water with the duck in her mouth. We were all hysterical.

“The guide told me that his worst fear is people that bring their own dogs, because most of them aren’t trained. But he told me that Ziggy was as good a dog as he had seen in years.”