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Tom Word | https://tomwordbooks.com/ | All Hunting Articles

Posted 11/28/2022

It was a rainy March Friday with more rain forecast for the weekend. Ben and Sam had endured a horrid week in their practices of law and medicine, but it was finally over. They sat in captains’ chairs in Ben’s library-conference room with a fifth of The Macallan 12 open on the table before them and thick insulated short glasses in their hands, each holding three fingers of the bottle’s contents. They had been silent for five minutes. They heard the outside door close behind Ben’s PIC (“Person in Charge”), Joanne, as she left for her weekly dance lesson.



“What’s the meanest thing you ever saw happen at a field trial,” Sam asked Ben out of nowhere.

“What prompted that question?” Ben asked.

“I have seen so much sorrow this week I want to hear something funny, and I know that question will get a funny story out of you.”

“You will get a story, but it will not be funny,” Ben said. He had already remembered the answer to Sam’s question, and the story of it was not at all funny in its ending, though it was in its beginning.

Ben debated with himself whether he should tell it, and decided he would for its cathartic value. Something had to clear the room of the gloom a bad week and a rainy, dark day had cast upon the curmudgeons.

“You sure you want to hear it?” Ben asked.

“Sure, anything to get my mind off what happened in my practice this week,” Sam said.

“Well, what do you think is the most important thing to a professional field trial handler?” Ben began.

“Getting good dogs to handle, I guess.”

“Wrong. Good owners—patrons— is the indispensable thing. Dogs are going to come and go—a precious few really good ones, lots of almost good ones, and when he gets a really good one it is likely to get sick or get hurt or get lost. That’s why good owners are essential, they understand and will stick with a handler through the inevitable bad luck.

“I tell you that so you will understand my story. Anyone who comes between a handler and a good owner is going to be the handler’s blood enemy. That’s where my story starts.

“ And the fellow who becomes the handler’s enemy in my story just made an innocent —mostly—mistake. It happened this way.

“ The fellow was reporting a trial held In Canada, in Manitoba on the prairie, where the best early fall trials used to be held. This reporter was a good one, his reports were interesting and everybody liked to read them in the American Field—that was the weekly bird dog newspaper then out of Chicago that was started in 1874– it’s been replaced now—sort of— by a monthly newsletter published by the United Kennel Club that bought the old American Field Publishing Company and its dog registry called the Field Dog Stud Book that sanctions field trials.

“The reporter had a weakness, every one knew it—he drank too much. And at the Manitoba trial he was badly hung over.



“The handler was running a dog owned by his best owner, an ideal owner. Ideal because he didn’t get to many trials, too busy with his day job as a medical doctor like you. But he loved his dogs and the field trial game and as long as the handler called him after his dogs ran and told him honestly how they had performed he was satisfied and sent the monthly checks to the handler for training and running his dogs.

“After the Manitoba trial the handler called his doctor-owner and told him, truthfully, that his dog had done a good job on the ground but there were no birds on the course he drew so he went bird-less.

“ Well, the hungover reporter got the dogs in the brace confused and reported that the handler had picked up the doctor-owner’s dog mid-heat. In fact, it was the brace-mate that got picked up.

“ When the doctor-owner got the issue of the American Field that included the report of the Manitoba trial, he of course read it and saw his dog had been picked up by his handler. Naturally, he thought the handler had lied to him, so he withdrew his dogs from the handler’s string. The handler had another handler who was at the Manitoba trial call the doctor-owner and explain the reporter’s error but the owner didn’t believe the alibi.

“That’s when the handler swore to get even with the hungover reporter. And here is how he did it.”

Ben paused in telling the story and refreshed his and Sam’s drams of The Macallan with dividends from the bottle on the table, then resumed.

“At the end of that field trial season, in March, the handler had agreed to supply a reporter’s mount at a piney woods division trial where he was a sponsoring club director. The hungover reporter from the Manitoba trial was scheduled to report. The handler saw his chance for revenge.

“Among his mounts was an athletic and spirited walking horse he often used as a handling or scouting horse. It could be used safely as a dog-owner or guest mount only if it received an injection of a sedative called Ace, proper name Acepromazine, shortly before it was to be ridden.

“At the piney woods trial the handler served up this horse for the reporter’s mount on the opening day, after administering an injection of Ace to it shortly before the day’s first breakaway. The horse performed calmly and safely for the reporter. Then on the trial’s final day the mount was again saddled for the reporter, but it was not injected with Ace.

“Shortly after the morning’s first breakaway, the distant call of “Point!” was heard from a scout. The reporter’s mount heard it, and true to its training as a dog horse, it lit out at a gallop in the direction of the scout’s voice. The reporter grabbed the mount’s mane and commenced yelling “Whoa, Whoa,” but to no avail. The mount’s gallop increased in speed, and inevitably the reporter, a marginal horseman at best, lost his feet in the stirrups and his seat in the saddle and tumbled to the ground, striking his head on a tree trunk, which rendered him briefly unconscious.

“ A volunteer rescue squad was summonsed and the reporter transported by ambulance to a hospital emergency room. He spent the night in the hospital and was then released, pronounced sufficiently recovered but to be woken in the night every hour for three days. His only permanent injury was to his ego. He fancied himself a good horseman but he was not, and every one in the field trial fraternity knew it.

“That was the meanest thing I ever saw done at a field trial,” Ben concluded.

“Wages of sin, I guess, “ Sam said, his mind distracted by the story from the sorrows of his medical practice.

Then Doc rose to use the men’s room. On the way to it he passed a window. On returning to the library-conference room he said to Ben, “It’s quit raining. Where are we going to fish tomorrow.”

On their drive to Mossy Swamp Plantation next morning in Ben’s pickup to bream fish, Doc asked Ben, “ How did you learn the story you told me yesterday.”

“I was there as a judge of the piney woods trial. I suspected what had happened with the reporter’s horse, and asked the handler. He admitted what he had done—after I agreed attorney-client privilege would apply. That’s why I didn’t tell you the handler’s or reporter’s or doctor-dog owner’s names.”

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