Short Stories

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

Luck

February 13, 2022 | National Championship, Short Stories | Comments

Billy Kane had qualified Wheelman in the last one-hour open all-age run before the National Championship entries closed. He had not expected to. The first qualifying win had come two seasons before, and he had not expected that one either. Won it when the best dog’s brace-mate failed to back and it went with the thief after the birds. But here he was approaching the Ames Plantation, never expecting to be here. But his usual bad luck returned. 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

A Simple Solution

January 21, 2022 | Short Stories | Comments

Rigging a field trial was a strategy old as the game. And rigging the drawing so the rigger’s entry drew the best course was a favorite strategy of many. Buck Eanes did it every year at the Deep South Championship, run on his vast cotton lands in Mississippi. 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

The Last Hour Dog

December 25, 2021 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

Ben and Sam were alone in Ben’s library-conference room on a cold and cloudy year-end Friday afternoon. The week had been brutal for both curmudgeons. Sam had had to tell a favorite patient her cancer had returned. Ben had had to tell a grandfather his favorite grandson had flunked out of prep school. Read more

Deceit

| Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

It was the week before Christmas. Ben and Sam at four in the afternoon were alone in Ben’s library-conference room with a new-old fifth bottle of The Macallan 16 (joint Christmas gift to them from a client-patient), ice and club soda. They were using neither ice nor soda, both preferring the premium stuff neat in their Georgia or Harvard embossed insulated plastic short glasses. Read more

Trial Dog v Gun Dog

December 20, 2021 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

Ben and Sam were gathered in Ben’s library-conference room Friday afternoon to celebrate survival of a brutal week of emergencies, Ben’s legal, Sam’s medical. Law and medicine were the last thing they wanted to talk or hear about; they were weary. In silence, Ben poured each a dram of The Macallan. Read more