It is not hard to find joy and sorrow joined close together in our game. In fact, they are a recurring theme in the human-canine dramas that tie together men and women and great field trial bird dogs.
As I reflect on the dramas surrounding the Florida Open All-Age Championship over the twenty-seven years I reported it, none is so poignant as that of Chinquapin Andy, Florida Champion in 2009 and 2010, his trainer-handler, Joe Hicks, and his owners, Ted Baker and T. Jack Robinson.
(Ted gave T. Jack co-ownership of Andy after his second win of the Florida, returning a gesture made by T. Jack with his great champion Solid Reward. These gestures celebrated the pals’ co-ownership of 1980 National Champion Builder’s Addition, acquired by them from Bill Ball for $10,000 when hard times in the home building business forced Bill to sell, and they needed to split the cost due to hard times in their own gravel and garment businesses).
Andy was sired by Stateline Showdown, Runner-Up in the Florida in 2004 for Jimmy Edmundson and a son of Chinquapin Slam, which nearly won in 1997 for Joe Hicks but was disqualified for moving slightly when a quail perched on a young pine limb close above his head while pointed flew. (Slam was one of a trio of littermates sired by Miller’s Chief that graced the Chinquapin string, hunting and trial. Slam died tragically soon after of heat exhaustion on the South Dakota prairie).
Andy’s dam was a daughter of Joe Shadow, which had won the Florida for Robin Gates in 1998 and 1999.
Joe Hicks had come to Chinquapin as dog trainer in 1984, and in 1985 won Runner-Up at the Florida with Paper Rosie, daughter of T. Jack’s Evolution from a daughter of Ted and Jack’s Builder’s Addition that Joe brought with him to Chinquapin. She won the Masters Quail Championship for Joe and Ted in 1984. Joe was promoted to manager of Chinquapin on Wallace Sessions’ retirement.
Joe Hicks had spotted genius in Andy as a weanling and made him a constant companion. From green derby age he demonstrated the essential ingredient, excitement. He hunted with speed and grace and a super nose and was happy in all he did. The trial dogs at Chinquapin double in the shooting string and Andy quickly became a favorite there as well.
Andy had qualified for the 2010 National Championship with his second Florida Championship win, but like most did not draw a day when birds were on his course at the Ames Plantation. But while away from home to compete there he won the West Tennessee Open All-Age to prove he was not just a piney woods contender.
This with his second Florida Championship win qualified him for the 2010 Quail Championship Invitational. He won it convincingly, and many were expecting him to win his third Florida Championship a month later. But tragedy intervened: Andy had won the Invitational despite being eaten up with cancer, and died just days after his win at Paducah and before the start of the Florida. He was still a young dog.
“Andy’s win at Paducah was convincing, but I could tell he was not himself,” says John Russell, Chairman of the Invitational, who had seen both of Andy’s Florida performances.
All who saw Andy perform regard him as one of the truly great all-age dogs of his era. Joe developed him after suffering his own health crisis, growing out of a hospital infection arising from back surgery necessary because of horse wrecks, that perineal curse of horseback dog men.