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Booty Blevins and Marvin Means
It was 1946. The War was finally over, and Booty was back in Alabama after duty as a duce-and-a half driver and then infantryman at the Battle of the Bulge, mustering out as a corporal. Before the War, he had worked as a hand on Mr. Maytag's quail plantation at Union Springs. The washing machine maker had loved to shoot quail. Booty had helped Mr. George Hardin train his bird dogs and retrievers and the horses ridden by those involved in the hunts or pulling the hunt wagon.
C-C-C-Cold-Weather Canine Care
Our October and November waterfowl hunts weren’t anything to write about. Air temps north of us hovered between 70-and-82 degrees Fahrenheit, and with all of that open water those birds weren’t in a hurry to go anywhere. A bone-chilling cold snap rolled in just before Christmas, and it spanned half of the East Coast from Canada to Maryland. The season’s entire migration seemed to arrive all at once.
My Invention
I have always been blessed with just the right amount of intelligence to get neck deep into something, but never enough intelligence to get out successfully. This was one of those occasions. It involves two bird dog bitches and a dummy, me.
How much to puppies sell for?
I’ll occasionally get a phone call, text or email from someone asking how much money they should be asking for their puppies when listing them on Gundog Central. I have a ton of data that I’ve collected on dog prices over the years and decided to put together this quick list showing the average list price for puppies, by breed. I’ve also looked at the trending data for the past five years to see if puppy prices were rising or falling, but didn’t see a lot of movement for the most popular breeds. Below you’ll find the median list price for puppies, broken down by breed, over the past year. These are puppy prices only, it does not include started or finished dogs.
Lt. Colonel Robert Milner, Jr., Rest in Peace
On July 14, 2024, the retriever world lost a titan with the passing of Lt. Col. Robert Milner, Jr., USAF, Ret.. Milner’s final battle was fighting amyloidosis, a rare liver disease. He was 79 years old.
Holes and Rules
"Every dog has got a hole, and his handler has to hide it," was a truism in the world of bird dog field trials.
Spring Shuffle Delayed
Oliver Bain sold his AI (artificial intelligence) Unicorn (billion-dollar start-up ) to Microsoft instead of taking it public. He was 58, and unknown to any around him, had a secret ambition he would now satisfy. As a boy growing up on a farm in Virginia, he had walked with his father, a dirt farmer, behind home grown pointers and setters after quail.
Properly Command Your Sporting Dog
Chatter and over-commanding are two common issues between some handlers and their dogs. For some reason, nonstop talking gives some handlers a sense that they’re in control of the dog. They believe the constant communication improves the dog’s situational performance, and that somehow the chatter motivates pups to cast better or to remain more staunchly on point. But most of those commands fall on deaf ears as the dog tunes out its owner. And when it comes to bird dogs, tuning out an owner is never a good idea.
The Handoff
The year was 1955. Buck Reed had returned home to South Georgia from the war in Europe ten years before and embarked on his career as an all-age handler of pointing dogs as successor to his father, Sam, who had then retired from the same trade, turning his string over to Buck. Sam sadly died a year later of a heart attack, victim of the near universal curse of his generation, cigarettes.
The Hunt Goes On
In the early 70s bird hunting was at its peak in Eastern North Carolina. I was a youngster still and loved to tag along on hunts with family and longed to have my own dogs. It was about this time that I attended my first bird dog field trial, a horseback event being held near my Uncle Henry’s farm. It was there that I first remember meeting Dr. W.C. Sanderson. He was there to compete as was his brother “Dute” Sanderson, a popular local professional dog trainer.
Should We?
Hurricane Hattie had requalified with a third place in the last qualifier of the season. Should they enter her was the question occupying her owner, Sam Slade, and handler, Mack Bain. Both were ambivalent and unsure of their judgment on the issue.
My Life As A Field Trial Reporter
From 1995 until 2022 I had two professions, lawyer and pointing dog field trial reporter. The first to earn money to pay creditors and afford to indulge in the second, pursued for the pleasure it brought me.
How to Help Your Dog Learn
When I started training retrievers professionally in 1972, I believed that dogs needed to be worked six days a week, for at least a half hour each day. If you have a big kennel, you know that’s a lot of work. After a few years and training several hundred dogs, I wound up skipping a day or two. That’s when things started to make sense.
THE LONG JOURNEY HOME
‘Why’, is a man question, not a dog question. Whether hate, or malice, or greed, or power, was someone’s motive for her circumstances mattered not to Belle. ‘What’ mattered to Belle. What could she do for her pup? ‘Who’ mattered also. Who could she trust, and who could she not trust? ‘Where’ mattered too. Where was she, and where was home? She sensed ‘When’ was important also, but she’d have to bide her time for now.
