Opening Day
On your way
With your bird dogs
It’s the best life can be
Another season you’ve made
To go forth behind them
As they surge before you
Seeking scent on the breeze Read more
Opening Day
Blog
The Surest Way
Ben Reach seemed to spend more time on fights among siblings these days than any other problem. And the leading cause of the disputes was joint ownership of real estate inherited from a parent.
“Don’t leave your children property to own together. It’s a sure recipe for an ugly fight,” Ben would say. His father had had a saying forty years earlier, “Surest way to destroy brotherly love is to leave brothers shared ownership of a farm — or anything else.” Read more
Abandoned Churches of North Dakota
Have you driven North Dakota
Seen the churches long abandoned
Standing unpainted off the highways
Still standing tall as when erected by Homesteaders
Just off ships from Norway, Sweden, Germany?
Families hauled here by the railroads
The Great Northern and the Soo Line
In their immigrant cars filled with
Man, wife, children, team, cow, shoat, ewe and goose Read more
No Thrill
There is no thrill so fine
As to release a derby you
Have bred and raised from a pup
In its first field trial stake
Watch it cast to the front
Hunt in yonder to a ridge
Turn to see you here behind
Then cast on in glee to find
Birds to point and hold —
For an instant
Then as fall falls away
Into winter as it grows
Into a muscled real bird dog
And stays longer at its finds
Lets you walk in front to flush
Finally watches birds fly away
Stays put to get your praise
Earned by learning what you want
How long will it take
You never know until it’s done
But when it is you can take pride
In your journey with your pup
Read more
No Chance
I was sitting on a bar stool
In a dark beer joint
With a long neck Bud
And a pickled pig's foot
I was alone
Nursin' a grudge
'Gainst a field trial judge
Just throwed out my dog
For flaggin' on point
Read more
Worst Mistake
Ben Reach and Sam Nixon MD were settled in Ben’s library-conference room at 4 PM on a Friday with drams of The Macallan 12 in plastic mugs and splits of club soda to dilute it on the table before them. Both were glad the work week was over — it had been a tough one. Sam had to tell a patient her cancer had returned. Ben had to tell a grandfather his favorite grandson had failed out of the grandfather’s Alma Mater.
Ben mentioned the bird dog trainers, field trial and hunting plantation types, were just back from summer training on northern prairies. He and Sam were invited to a dove shoot on Mossy Swamp Plantation tomorrow.
“What was the worst screw-up you saw field trial judges make in your years of doing that?” Read more
Why Field Trials Matter
They need us
We need them
Dogs and humans
Mutually depend
We bond for sure
And no types more
Than bird dogs
And bird dog folk Read more
The Great Field Trial Dog Snatch Caper
This is a field trial story worthy of Sherlock Holmes, or Laurel and Hardy, but that could have been tragic. It’s the story of the theft of a handler’s entire string of entries at a field trial held at Amelia, Virginia in the early 1980s, a time of strong competition among accomplished east coast pro and amateur handlers... Read more
A Few of Means
A few men and women of means
Kept all-age field trials alive
Through depressions recessions and wars
Helped by trainers in love with the game
Since 1874 Read more
“Helpin’ Each Other”
It was 1957, in the era before “Helpin’ Each Other,” when pro bird dog handlers scouted for one another out of economic necessity. It was in the era when pro handlers traveled in stake-bed trucks instead of dually pickup trucks pulling goose neck trailers, and in the era when scouts were mostly black men employed year around as assistant trainers by the white handler they scouted for.
Those scouts were a band of brothers, low paid but loving their work and the dogs they scouted and helped train. Read more