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| Chuck Robbins photo.... |
As big as a really big setter, Sam was indeed a handsome dog, great personality, loved people, especially kids, might have been the easiest to house break of all but was absolutely clueless to the ideas of pointing birds and despite countless repetitions never did learn to obey even the most basic commands—such as No and Here. To be fair I don’t think stubbornness was the issue. I do think Sam suffered what would be labeled in the classroom these days a learning disability.
If Sam ever pointed even a single tweety bird I missed it. Though he did run down and kill a skunk but not before getting thoroughly doused. Twenty miles from home I threw him in the trunk and still we had to drive home with all the windows down. Worse I never did get the stink out of the car’s interior, forget the trunk. A couple weeks later, he tried to eat the one and only porcupine he encountered—an ugly affair, in case you wondered, and one pretty much nailed the coffin shut.
When one day, I let him out to clean the kennel he made a few mad laps around the yard, jumped the fence and vanished. I spent a couple days looking for his sorry ass before finally coming to my senses and giving it up as a really bad idea.
Around 7 or 8 Bess began to slow down and seemed the perfect time to add a little dog power to the operation. I tried a couple Britts but neither came close to being a suitable replacement. During that period a guy I barely knew called and offered to give me a fully trained springer spaniel bitch. “Just too busy to hunt her. She’s a really good dog and deserves better.”
Though I had no desire to own a flushing dog for reasons now long forgotten I bit. As turned out, Sophie and I had really brief relationship. It soon became apparent “fully trained and really good dog” were blatant lies. Right off, I planted several birds, turned her loose and and she failed the abbreviated “hunt test” completely. Thinking maybe she’d had bad experiences with planted birds I took her to a friend’s shooting preserve in the off season. There were plenty of leftover released birds hadn’t been handled for several weeks—pheasants, chukar and quail—and she not only failed to work/ flush a single bird properly she ignored both voice and whistle commands any “fully trained dog” would know.
Blatant lies aside she had the personality of an angry rattler. Whenever I approached her kennel she would run into her box and growl. I could stop her growling and coax her out by rattling the food pan but the look in her eye left no doubt we were far from becoming best buds.
Then one day as she ate I reached in to fill her water bowl and she bit me on the hand. The bite did not draw blood and I foolishly decided she struck not out of anger but rather surprise or even fear I might take her food away. But a few days later as I set her food pan down she nailed me good, leaving a scar on my forearm I carry to this day decades later. And that as they say was that. I snapped on a lead dragged her to the truck, tossed her in a crate and dropped her in the yard where she came from... And you guessed it I never heard from the guy again. Do you suppose he knew?
That same summer I had another short relationship (like 6 weeks) with a male tri-color setter named Tuck. The details are a bit fuzzy, but I think a friend of uncle Bob who bred setters offered him for free—something about too many dogs? Why he didn’t sell him is more than I know. But when uncle Bob declined I ended up with Tuck. (As they say a sucker is born every minute?)
Anyway between work and fishing, I had little time to run dogs. But I did manage to get him out a couple evenings. The second evening he trailed a hen pheasant and her half grown chicks a long way in an alfalfa field, pointed staunchly until I flushed them. “Lookin’ good,” I told uncle Bob, next day. But a couple weeks later, I came home from work and found him dead in the kennel.
Sorry but I can’t shake the feeling the breeder knew too.
To Be Continued...
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