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Suspicion Unconfirmed

May 6, 2024 | Short Stories | Comments
Fred Barnes was a watcher. Little got by him. For the last two years he had been watching John Payne, a professional pointing dog handler, and his scout, Willie Blevins. Fred judged field trial’s a lot. Why? Because he had horses and a truck-trailer rig to haul them, and if he committed, he showed, and he appeared to be without favorites among handlers or owners, pointers or setters. He was pleasant enough, stayed sober in daylight hours. Accepted only gas money to judge. He watched constantly the dogs under judgment. Did not chat or gather wool while judging. Rode every brace at the same pace. Read more

Growing Our Own

April 29, 2024 | Poetry | Comments
Growing our own  Was vital to life When I was young But now lost in the fog Of history Like “putting up”  Meaning planting picking then  Shucking shelling snapping  And canning Read more

Should We?

March 30, 2024 | Short Stories | Comments
Hurricane Hattie had requalified with a third place in the last qualifier of the season. Should they enter her was the question occupying her owner, Sam Slade, and handler, Mack Bain. Both were ambivalent and unsure of their judgment on the issue.  Hattie was nine years old. She had won the National Championship as a four-year-old. Could she go the three hours now was the issue. Both Sam and Mack judged she could, but they worried about the toll it might take on her. Neither wanted to shorten her good years left. She had won four major all-age championships for them and the Purina All-Age Dog-of-the-Year Award the season she won the National. Why stress her? both asked.  Read more

Leaving the Circuit

March 25, 2024 | Short Stories | Comments
Harley had recognized he had a problem soon after he regained consciousness. Lying on his back, he felt first the warm breath of Chester, his favorite dog horse, on his face. Opening his eyes, he looked up into Chester’s big kind ones. Slowly, his mind cleared.  He had no memory of hitting the hard North Dakota prairie. Perhaps Chester had stumbled, but he seldom did. His ability to see and avoid holes of all kinds had endeared him to Harley all their decade together, that and his smooth gaits, flat walk,  running walk, fox trot, slow lope, canter. Chester had been a good—no, a great, dog horse.  Read more

Perfect Race

March 19, 2024 | Poetry | Comments
Have you ever handled A perfect race?  One where your dog goes  To every bird-blessed place Where the front’s  All he wants to seek And he reaches for it  In one constant sweep Read more

Rained Out

March 11, 2024 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments
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.   Read more

The Scout

February 29, 2024 | Short Stories | Comments
He was a mystery man. None on the circuit knew him or where he came from, who his parents or other kin were, where he had been before he showed up at the Ames Plantation one February pulling a small goose-neck horse trailer holding three dog horses with a five-year-old diesel dually bearing New Mexico plates. His voice betrayed no accent or region’s twang; his complexion and facial features could have been guessed to reveal a mixture of all or some of several races, white, hispanic, black, Native American, oriental, which and in what proportions was anyone’s guess Read more