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The Smith Setter Celebration
It’s tough to beat the warm days and cool nights of Georgia in the Spring. The high heat and humidity, the kind that drives field trailers in droves to the Dakotas, the Rockies, or Canada, hasn’t yet hit. The sounds of songbirds float on the light-variable winds, while the thundering gobbles of Eastern wild turkeys echo through the fields and draws. Bird doggers hear them, but they’re really listening for the ‘poor Bob White’ whistle. Gentleman Bob has been an important part of life on the land off of Ben Hatcher Road for a long time.
Losing It
Harry Bain had been an all-age for-the-public pointing dog trainer-handler for thirty years. In that role he had lived in south Alabama, trained trial and hunting dog's mid-July through mid-September in North Dakota and traveled the major all-age trial circuit September through mid-March. Summers he had fished the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere until the last week of June when he readied for the trip north.
A Dread Problem and a Solution
Sam Teel and Booty Blevins had been partners ten years, never had a fight. They argued some about how to fix a problem, but each knew that was healthy. They didn't make much money, but loved what they did for a living, training and handling pointing dogs on the field trial circuit.
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.
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.
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.
An End and a Beginning
The economics of the business had always been fragile. For-the-public trainer-handlers
A Lost Dog
It was July 15, 2003 and Billy Culp was fixin’ to turn loose for a workout his first green derby of the season. He was training this year on a new place just east of Lignite and south of Route 5. There were twenty pointing dog trainers working within a forty-mile radius of Billy , two hundred or more in the state, some serious pros, some serious amateurs, some just guys with a dog or two and a pickup truck.
THE WHISTLE
While running a dog at the NBHA National Derby recently, I lost a whistle that I had used in South Dakota back in 1979. It was a special whistle to me. I clearly remember sitting crossed legged on a horse while waiting on a lost dog and looking out across those open prairies. I thought of home for just a moment, and because it was my mother's birthday, I scratched the date on the whistle's side, August 27, 1979. I should not have been using such a keepsake, but it was my favorite. Even good things come and go, I guess. Losing it, and looking for it, and remembering it, reminded me of the following; one of many memories I have of that summer. It's not meant to be a striking work of prose although it may become one sometime in the future. I'm just recounting as it comes to me. However, every word and how it transpired is true, exactly true. (I'll change the names only to save any embarrassment, though no one should be embarrassed by the truth).
The Last Hour Dog
Ben and Sam were alone in Ben's library-conference room on a cold and cloudy year-end Friday afternoon. The week had been brutal for both curmudgeons. Sam had had to tell a favorite patient her cancer had returned. Ben had had to tell a grandfather his favorite grandson had been expelled from prep school.
Last Hunt
John Cole had been hunt master on Old Pine Plantation thirty years. Before that he had worked on other plantations in the quail belt, that land between Albany and Tallahassee where quail still thrived, thanks to Yankee old money, fire, and God's providence. He'd been born on one where his father before him had trained bird dogs and managed hunts for the owner and his guests, "folks with more money than good sense," his father used to say.
The Master Thief
Fred Freeze was a genius at training pointing dogs, of a certain sort. Very smart ones, the ones who understood what field trials were all about. Not necessarily the most athletic or naturally talented, but those that could be taught to leverage the talents of a brace mate. And none had been so well suited to Fred Freeze's methods as Candice, a pointer female who learned tricks from Fred like a circus performer.
