I look back on a long, full life and remember the characters in it. By characters I mean folks who were unconventional, unusual, different, distinctive, and giving to me — of friendship or knowledge or both. I want to briefly remember a few of them, one here and others later in other brief essays.
I start with Donald McCaig, the kindest, gentlest most unselfishly giving-to-me-person I ever knew, for no reason but a shared love of working dogs, his for sheep dogs — Border Collies — mine for pointing dogs.
I had read his Nop’s Trials and we had a mutual friend whom I called to ask if he would introduces us in the hope I could learn from McCaig how to get a dog book published. He provided the introduction, and McCaig asked me to send him my manuscript. A couple months later he called me, said he was coming to Richmond on a book tour and asked to meet me for lunch. I took him to the Commonwealth Club where I reserved a small room for privacy. We ordered single malts and our lunches and Donald said, “I have bad news and good news. Your novel is not publishable but with a lot of work it might be.” Then he handed me my manuscript on which he had made penciled edits on every page and copious suggestions for things to do and changes. “Revise it and send it back to me and I will go over it again,” Donald said.
I did and he did, numerous times over several years. Thus Donald taught me to write and we became dear friends. The manuscript was for Gentlemen, Let ‘em Go, my novel set in pointing dog field trials.
Donald died November 11, 2018 at age 78 at his farm in Highland County, Virginia where he moved with wife Anne in the 1960s after giving up a Madison Avenue career in advertising to write and train and campaign Border Collies across America and internationally. His non-fiction book Eminent Dogs Dangerous Men about Border Collies and sheep dog trials is marvelous and would appeal to pointing dog trialers. He also wrote award winning historical fiction, including Jacob’s Ladder and Rhett Butler’s People, sequel to Gone With the Wind.