Other Authors

The National Finals by Donald McCaig

May 24, 2023 | Donald McCaig, Herding Trials | Comments

June’s qualifying run was third from last in the late afternoon, hottest part of the day. When I went to the post she really wanted to go left (fixing on the road traffic) but she’s a shallower outrunner than Luke and although she’d take a redirect and go toward the sheep, I feared that once she got over that first ridge and out of sight, she’d come to the center Read more

Characters in My Life

May 5, 2023 | Donald McCaig, Remembrances | Comments

I look back on a long, full life and remember the characters in it. By characters I mean folks who were unconventional, unusual, different, distinctive, and giving to me — of friendship or knowledge or both. I want to briefly remember a few of them, one here and others later in other brief essays. I start with Donald McCaig, the kindest, gentlest most unselfishly giving-to-me-person I ever knew, for no reason but a shared love of working dogs, his for sheep dogs — Border Collies — mine for pointing dogs. Read more

Preacher

May 28, 2020 | Danny Bardwell, Short Stories | Comments

Everyone called him Preacher. That’s all I had ever heard. So I asked Mr. Turley what Preacher’s real name was. “Gene Turner,” Mr. Turley replied. “Hahaha. I’ve got to say, he got it honest. Was the beat’nist thing I ever saw. Faith, that’s what it was. Maybe not in God, but faith none the less.” Read more

How I Came to Write About Bird Dogs

May 18, 2020 | Donald McCaig, Other Things | Comments

I came by a love of stories, written and oral, by inheritance. My father and his father loved them too, and from an early age turned me to reading stories. They were both fans of O. Henry, Jack London and James Thurber, among others. My father liked particularly light verse, especially that of Ogden Nash, which appeared regularly in The New Yorker Magazine Read more

Marshall Loftin (by Danny Bardwell)

March 24, 2020 | Danny Bardwell, Other Authors | Comments

My favorite Marshall Loftin story was told to me by Marshall while we were riding the soon to be grounds at Sandy Hollow, Wilmer, Louisiana. Marshall said one December a judge from Baton Rouge called him to see about buying a squirrel dog. It seemed that the judge wanted to take his grandson squirrel hunting during the Christmas break. Read more

The Whistle (by Danny Bardwell)

March 21, 2020 | Danny Bardwell, Other Authors | Comments

While running a dog at the NBHA National Open derby stake last week I lost a whistle that I had used in South Dakota. I had scratched my mother’s birthday on the side of it on that day, August 27, 1979. I should not have been using it, but it was my favorite. Good things come and go I guess. Losing it, and looking for it, and remembering it, reminded me of the following, one of many memories I have of that summer. It’s not meant to be a work of prose although it may become one sometime in the future. I’m just recounting as it comes to me. However, every word and how it transpired is true, exactly true. Read more

The Last Field Trial

February 27, 2020 | Danny Bardwell, Other Authors | Comments

A January fog, heavy wet and cold Crept down from the darkness of the pines and across the gentle folds. Not an apparition mind you but real I’m here to say. A thump loud on my door when the Field arrived that day. It lay flat, folded in a linear way Thin and plain and pale. I looked from side to side to see whom the carrier might be. But it was the fog that brought it, and delivered the truth to me. Read more