My grandson shot his first grouse today
Over the point of my son’s Trixie
Daughter of Shadow Oak Bo
And the best we have owned in sixty years Read more
Happy Day
Blog
Two Slate Signs at Livingston Place
The Continental Open All-Age Championship
Livingston Place in 2002
Cindy Crawford Top Qualifier
Barshoe Esquire Champion
Dale Bush and Sherry Ebert judged
Cindy’s qualifying race for Jimmy Edmundson
On the day’s last course
Was spectacular Read more
When January Comes
When January comes
I will be here at home
First time since 1994
Won’t be at Chinquapin
The second week
Of that cold month at home
I spent in North Florida
From 1995 through 2022 Read more
A Brace at Ames
The year was 1938. The place was the Ames Plantation at Grand Junction, Tennessee, 55 miles east of the Mississippi River at Memphis. The event was the National Bird Dog Championship. It had been held most years since 1896, and here since 1901. The subject of this story is the winning performance and the players in it, canine, equine and human. Read more
The Worst Injustice
“What was the worst injustice you ever saw committed in field trials?” Sam asked Ben on a rainy Friday afternoon as Ben poured them drams of The Macallan in Ben’s library-conference room. Sam was looking to hear a lively story to end his depression after a tough week with patients.
“That’s easy. It was Bernie Matthys’s banning of Miller’s White Powder and Ferrel Miller from field trials.”
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War
Wars between son-in-law and mother-in-law are endemic in our culture, perhaps pandemic in wealthy families and especially when son is Dixie-born and bred and mother-in-law a Yankee. So it was between Eloise Crump of Boston and Doug Hall of Thomasville, husband of Eloise’s daughter Charlotte. Read more
How the Florida Open All-Age Championship Was Different
1. No mud — ever, on Chinquapin Farm, even after heavy rain. No creeks, much less rivers. Three man-dug ponds, one at Big House, one on second morning hour course, one on second hour afternoon course. Soil: sand over lime rock, everywhere. Cover: wire grass, everywhere. No crop fields. No wooded areas that cannot be ridden through on horseback.
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Defining Moment – A True Thanksgiving Story from 1950
Is there an event that defines you, that set your course for the rest of your life?
At age 83 I look back seventy-two years to such a moment, one dramatic and thanks to Google and Wikipedia and the U S Weather Bureau, easy to research and document.
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He’s an Old-Time Handler
He’s an old-time field trial handler
Rides right in front of the judges
Sings to his dog
Lets it hunt through the country
Find its own way Read more
The Agency
Ben Reach and Sam Nixon, MD, ran a secret agency. It was sometimes an employment agency and sometimes a housing agency, and often both, but its customers and patrons never realized it. They thought the curmudgeons just by coincidence ran across opportunities to help folks, their friends, sometimes clients, sometimes patients, sometimes strangers, sometimes a combination. They did not charge for their services but gathered much personal satisfaction from rendering them. Read more