For Billy Kell, it seemed the worst possible day of his life. It did not turn out that way. This is the story.
It was 2004. Billy was an up-and-coming bird dog pro, age twenty-eight, a trainer-handler of pointing dogs for field trial competition. He’d grown up the son of a quail plantation manager near Thomasville, Georgia, who earlier had been the plantation’s dog trainer and hunt manager.
Billy had, following working for another plantation a couple years after high school as assistant dog trainer, elected to try his hand as a field trial circuit-traveling-for-the-public-trainer-handler, then by luck gained Fred Eanes as a patron. Eanes was a technology whiz, founder of an AI (artificial intelligence) unicorn (private company worth $1billion +) that was acquired by Google for a cool $2 billion.
Eanes had then caught the field trial bug and acquired mysteriously a phenomenal young pointer named Lightning-Rod Rebel, which he turned over to Billy to develop. Reb’s pedigree contained no dogs top or bottom that Billy recognized, not a field trial winner in three generations. The pedigree had been supplied to Fred Eanes by Reb’s seller, a quail-hunting-by-truck-guide based at Falfurrias, Texas who had shown Fred a good time quail hunting amid cactus, mesquite, thorns, diamondbacks, feral hogs, tarantulas and javelinas.
Billy suspected the pedigree was bogus as to Reb’s sire or dam or both, for Reb showed attributes of other dogs Billy knew from the field trial circuit. Billy suspected (accurately it would turn out) that Reb was bred in the purple but had been stolen as a weanling and sold by its thief, with the true owner of the litter unaware that the pup that became Reb had been whelped.
Then came the announcement in the American Field Magazine that parentage of dogs that placed in championships would henceforth have to be verified by DNA. The announcement struck terror in the hearts of many once it was understood, for many dogs in competition were falsely registered, that is, registered with one or both of its parents misstated. Why? For many reasons.
In Reb’s case, the owner of Reb’s true sire had been unwilling to breed him to Reb’s dam, a hunting dog in the kennel of a business rival. Reb’s sire had been “borrowed” out of its kennel at 3 AM for the surreptitious servicing of Reb’s dam.
Ironically, the blood of Reb’s sire was not desired in the kennel of the dam’s owner for field trialing purposes. The dam’s owner’s head hunting guide, Willie Sutton, wanted Reb’s sire’s blood for his drive and bird finding prowess, as necessary in a South Texas truck dog as in an all-age competitor. Reb had as a weanling been stolen by an employee of the dam’s owner and sold to Fred Eanes, who had been a frequent hunting guest at the dam’s owner’s South Texas ranch because his AI unicorn (by then a Google subsidiary) was a customer of the dam’s owner’s digital hardware company.
Now, the plot thickens. Reb wins for Billy Kell the Alabama Open All-Age Championship, a second first place, thus becoming eligible to compete in the National Bird Dog Championship, held each February at the Ames Plantation at Grand Junction, Tennessee, assuming DNA proved Reb was bred as his papers declare. This is a real big deal for Billy and Fred, for Reb would be the first National entry handled by Billy and the first owned by Fred. When the implications of the DNA verification requirement sunk in, first for Billy, then for Fred, head scratching ensued.
Fred called the employer of Reb’s seller. Turned out that Reb’s seller no longer worked for him, nor were the whereabouts of the seller known. When Fred emailed Reb’s registration certificate to the employer-owner of the litter that included Reb, he knew nothing. “I leave that registration stuff to my head dog man, Willie Sutton” the owner said.
His head dog man Willie Sutton said, “I enrolled the litter but the guy who sold Mr. Eanes the dog must have stolen a pup and forged a signature on the certificate of the dam’s owner. (He did not tell his employer of his consistent practice of overstating the number of pups in a litter when he enrolled it, thus aiding unwittingly the thief of Reb. Nor did he confess that the litter’s sire was misrepresented).
Fred Eanes next explained to the litter owner (and undisputed owner of Reb’s dam) the importance of verifying with DNA who Reb’s true sire and dam were to Reb’s career in field trials. And Fred was not subtle in telling the dam’s owner of the importance of this to continued good business relations with his former unicorn-now-Google-owned company, still managed by him, Reb’s dam’s owner’s best customer.
The person most in a sweat now was Willie Sutton, who had been responsible for the unauthorized theft of the services of Reb’s true sire and the false registration as to sire of Reb’s litter. He knew a DNA sample from the papered sire of the litter would prove false. He considered the assassination of the paper sire as a way around his dilemma, but the paper sire was now a house pet of the wife of his employer.
That’s when Ben Reach was consulted by Willie Sutton. He was guided to Ben by a Southwest Georgia dog man who turkey hunted in spring with Willie. Willie opened his conversation with Ben with, “Is it true what I tell you, you cannot tell nobody else?”
“Yes, unless you tell me you are planning an assassination?” Ben said, half in jest.
“What about the assassination of a pointer?” (He had in mind the paper sire of Reb, now the house pet of his employer’s wife).
Ben was intrigued. Despite his long-dead farther’s admonition, “Do not take cases involving dogs,” Ben said, “Tell me your story. I won’t repeat it without your permission.”
So Willie confessed to Ben his theft of Reb’s sire’s semen.
Before Willie finished his telling, Ben knew the only solution was to approach Reb’s true sire’s owner with the truth, or at least the essential fact that his dog was Reb’s sire.
“But he hates my boss,” Willie said when Ben explained what must be done.
“Suppose,” Ben said, “an intermediary trusted by Reb’s sire’s owner could approach him with the offer of free pups from a repeat breeding plus pups from Reb (who was becoming mildly renowned in field trialing circles, in which Reb’s true sire’s owner was a player). And without telling him who the semen thief is?”
“How could that possibly be done?” Willie Sutton said.
Ben grinned. “The world of field trials is quite small, though its participants are thinly spread across the North American continent. I know Reb’s true sire’s owner pretty well. We have judged field trials together. And I’ve known Billy Kell all his life.”
“But what do I tell my boss?” Willie Sutton said.
“Sometimes the truth is the only answer,” Ben said.
And thus was Reb’s pedigree corrected.