It was likely at
A one course trial
Held on a weekend
Close to home
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First Placement
Blog
Call Em Back
Of all the words
I hate to hear
We are calling back two
Are the worst by far Read more
Last Trip to Grand Junction
He woke alone in the trailer, a single-wide on concrete blocks on a rented half-acre lot on a dirt road off Route 32 ten miles east of Leesburg. Jess Clark looked at the calendar, taped on the refrigerator door, where he marked off the days with a pencil stub on a string, and read in the first un-Xd block, “February 11, Sat.”
He turned the left burner eye on the two-burner stove to high to heat water for coffee and put the enameled steel pot on it. There is something I must do today, he told himself, and strained to remember. Read more
A Questionable Entry
We turned him loose
On “27” at 1:15
He cast to front
Was soon unseen
But Lordy Me
Our
Sung out far right
And it was he on point at 10 Read more
When I Was Young
When I was young
Til I grew old
I got my joy
From dogs afield
Dogs seeking birds
To point with style Read more
My Love Affair With Chinquapin
My long life (85 years) has been marked by good luck. None so great as meeting Ted Baker and gaining his invitation to report the Florida Open All-Age Championship which I did from 1995 through 2022. As a result, I watched the continent’s best all-age dogs in competition head to head annually over twenty-seven consecutive years on wild quail. Just think of it. Read more
A Derby
Billy Hanes had been a framing carpenter until rising interest rates choked the house building business around his native west Kentucky and he withdrew his savings, bought a four-year-old dually and a well used gooseneck livestock trailer he adapted to haul horses and dogs and lit out for North Dakota in June, hoping to find a place to train. He lucked on to that in a week of driving around and asking wherever he saw a roadside mailbox in likely looking territory. He had with him four green horses he’d picked up at a sale barn and a dozen dogs, half pups, half coming derbies, all pointers. Read more
The Farrier
He knew many, was known by few, known deeply by none. None knew his home place, for he had none, save his truck, adapted by him for his craft as an itinerant shoer of horses. Where he was depended on the calendar: spring and summer on the small-town rodeo circuit in the west, early fall through March on the pointing dog field trial circuits (all-age and shooting dog). Read more
A Christmas Fix
Ben and Sam were brainstorming on how to help their old friends, the handler Jim Heath and his helper Booty Blevins, with their problem, brought on by old age. Jim was seventy, Booty seventy-two.
The Curmudgeons had considerable experience, much of it first-hand, with problems brought on by old age. But they had been fortunate to avoid Jim and Booty’s problem, LOF (lack of funds). Jim and Booty still had the will to work, indeed loved to work. Problem was, age had robbed them of an asset essential to their craft, eyesight. Jim had macular degeneration, Booty glaucoma. What could they do with their skill sets to make a buck, that was the question the Curmudgeons were pondering as they slowly sipped end-of-day-end-of-week drams of The Macallan 12 in Ben’s library-conference room. Read more
A Fall Derby Stake
I love a fall derby stake
For the chance it uncovers a great
The chance may be slim Read more