Ben Reach

Diss and Ace

August 2, 2022 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

“What does diss mean?” Ben asked Joanne. “Disrespect, or a put down. Kids say it a lot.” “That clears things up,” Ben said. He had just got off the phone with Fred Carter, a bird dog trainer-handler worried about getting sued. He’d said an owner had dissed his scout, and that was maybe the cause of the incident that could get him sued by the owner. Later that day, Ben drove to Fred’s little farm to get more facts. He was greeted by ten kennel runs of barking bird dogs. Fred and his scout, Benny Blevins, were cleaning runs and preparing the evening’s feed for the dogs. Read more

Burn or Bury (A deadly serious story)

June 15, 2022 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

Ike Slapp died after surviving two wives and leaving two daughters, one by each wife. Ben was fishing in Montana with Sam when Ike bit the dust, literally and figuratively. Ike’s older daughter took the bull by the horns and arranged Ike’s funeral and burial without consulting Ben or her sister. When Ben got home he found Ike snug in his coffin, buried in a local cemetery with (literally) his first wife. Read more

Long Leaf or Concrete

April 27, 2022 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

It was a dread but familiar problem. How to solve it and satisfy long-waiting heirs and at the same time save a landmark of unique natural beauty was the challenge. Fred Fulton had owned Leaning Pine Plantation fifty years, bought it with the proceeds of his early and first big business deal. He had stewarded it lovingly since, even as urban development approached it relentlessly. Read more

Whatsleft Plantation

March 22, 2022 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

Whatsleft Plantation enjoyed a special place in the hearts of Ben Reach and Sam Nixon MD. It lay on the edge of Thomasville. It had been in the family of its owner Frank Atkinson since 1880 when his great-grandfather discovered it while escaping Cleveland’s ice and snow and lodging at a fashionable Thomasville resort hotel, that day’s equivalent of The Breakers in Palm Beach. Read more

The Hand Off

March 21, 2022 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

Fred Fox and Benny Carr had been partners thirty years. They had traveled the circuit each year, starting in Canada (later South Dakota), where they trained, in late August, then drifted south week by week. In December they’d begun the winter piney-woods season at the Georgia Open All-Age and Derby Championships, then worked the Florida, the Continental Derby and All-Age... Read more

The End

February 23, 2022 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

It was at the Quail Championship Invitational, at the West Kentucky Wildlife Management Area, that lonely expanse of gently rolling neglected agricultural land surrounding a scary nuclear energy gaseous diffusion refinery and a coal-powered TVA electric energy generating plant on the bank of the Tennessee River, on the outskirts of Paducah, Kentucky. Read more

End of a Partnership

February 9, 2022 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

John Ford had worked as an over-the-road-for-the-public-all-age pointing dog handler his last twenty years. For the last ten he had partnered on the road (“helpin’ each other,” the system was called) and for summer prairie training with Billy Green, whose career had mirrored John’s, the difference being John hailed from Georgia, Billy from Alabama. Each was forty-three, married with two teen-age children, and with a hard-working wife, John’s a nurse, Billy’s a sales rep for internet business services. Read more

The Call

February 2, 2022 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

The call came as a shock to Ben Reach, though he knew it could come any time. Carle Dixon was dead at age sixty, had fallen dead from his horse while handling in the North Dakota Open All-Age at Columbus. The cause was a burst brain aneurism, detected three years before during a cat scan following a horse wreck while checking for a concussion and inoperable. Read more

Ben Reach’s Secret Crusade

January 4, 2022 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

Ben had been waging a secret crusade for many years. The crusade was to light the field trial fire in a few who could afford to help the sport. The crusade often seemed hopeless. Few who could afford to help had any interest in trials or trial dogs. Time and again Ben saw very wealthy buyers of quail plantations with no interest in field trials. They were only interested in shooting birds. And they were told trial dogs were worthless for hunting by other plantation owners with no experience with trial dogs. Read more

A Transition

December 28, 2021 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

When Ben Reach got the call from Randy Marsh he immediately suspected what Randy would ask his advice on. There were two clues. One was Randy’s tone of voice. The other was the general state of field trials, what with Covid and drought in the west — North and South Dakota and Montana especially, circumstances leading to trial cancellations and low entries. Read more