A Thousand Words

I like this picture. One of those thousand word shots but is a good representation of the infatuation that draws us to bird dogs. Man’s infatuation with nature and awe struck admiration for a pointing dog’s senses and abilities, abilities that we can never experience, to conquer nature with that mesmerizing control over a pinned bird. OR...... Mike could just be looking at Ted thinking, “Man what the hell is the matter with you today!” 1,000 words you can fill in!

Runners!

Short on details at the moment, more updates later. But just returned from a few weeks in WI, MN and PA and the name of the game was runners! I don’t remember so many grouse on the run as we saw in front of the dogs, mine and others. Even had woodcock on the run, one in particular I saw running before chasing it up. The dogs did an excellent job even with the running birds handling and pointing birds all the way through in each state. I think the record runner was a grouse that ran on Lacey what seemed like a 100 yards even in thick WI cover (she ended up bumping it but it was my fault, I didn’t believe her after about the 5th relocation!). And I had a brood of grouse in one cover I worked for two days that ran like rats, they were unbelievable. Not sure if this is a sign of older birds (and a bad sign indicating a low hatch) or what but it was interesting. The PA birds were awfully touchy and had to be pointed from a distance, but not sure they were quite classable as runners. So far this year in working dogs in PA, NY, WI and MN it looks like we are averaging about 4-5 birds/hr over the dogs with both grouse and woodcock counted and they have been handling the birds flawlessly. It's been a great year. I'll look at numbers later.

Also, congrats to Mike Reeves in GA and ‘Chip’ Chiappini on winning the Wolverine Derby Classic with their Torq-Lacey male pup called Charlie with three broke finds on grouse and woodcock!

Last of the George's

Not much going on this summer and much too busy doing the wrong things. Here are some pictures of latest pups out of CH Long Gone George ex CH Keystone's Red Ryder that kept us busy doing the right things. About the only significance to these pups at the moment is due to an unexpected passing these are the last pups out of George.