Ben Reach enjoyed nothing more than a rained-out day at a major field trial. A day when participants had no choice but to sit around a clubhouse and wait to see if the rain would lift enough to resume the running.
Today he was at Paducah, where a decade or two before he had ridden more than once as a judge or reporter on Thanksgiving weekend for the Invitational or right after for the Kentucky Quail Classic and Derby. Today it was 45 degrees F with rain falling steadily. A log fire roared, lunch was over, and hope was slim for more running today.
Six handler-scouts and a dozen others, owners, club members there to marshal, drive the dog truck, or just watch the dogs, sat about. The conversation turned to scouting, and what was and was not ethical. As always, opinions differed widely.
The era of employee-scouts was long past. The “helpin’ each other” era had long prevailed. In the assemblage was only one black man, a long retired professional scout from the golden years of all-age trials who had worked with a now-dead white handler, both in the employ of a very wealthy plantation owner from Georgia, also now long dead, who campaigned a string in the A J G Sage tradition.
As often happened, the conversation had come around to a debate on whether it was a breach of the rules for a scout to ride forward of the judges where he could do so unseen by the judges to get his dog where it could suddenly appear, apparently unaided, at a place on the course far to the front.
A couple of well-heeled owners, fairly new to the game and with ultra-expensive fancy rigs of which they were quite proud parked outside, were declaring they never wanted their handling team members to ride forward of the judges, no matter the opportunities to do so undetected that the contour of the land or its tree cover provided.
About then the retired black scout caught Ben’s eye and grinned briefly, unseen by any others. A few minutes later, nature called Ben and the retired scout and they met in the men’s room.
The scout said to Ben, under his breath, “Them youngsters don’t understand, what don’t get seen by a judge at a field trial did not happen.”