What are you doing here, Uncle Rico?

Near my parents’ home was a huge river. I was walking home when I noticed my uncle (no uncle in particular, in fact I’d never seen or met this guy before). He was standing on the edge of the river throwing something in. He had his trusty dog nearby, and also there was a duck floating in the water. Every time my uncle threw the thing in the water, the duck would go immediately fetch it and bring it back to the dog. Then the dog would take it back to my uncle. I approached him, amazed, and asked if that was the first duck [ever] taught to fetch. He laughed and said it wasn’t exactly fetching, because the duck only took the object (it looked like a small bowling pin) back to the dog. I pulled out my camera to take a short video of the scene & maybe get the video on ebaumsworld.com or something, but like in so many other dreams my camera wouldn’t work right when I needed it to. So I just headed on home.