Not just for the birds
"The man must learn to know his dog as a personality, not a formula." -George Bird Evans "Peat No!" I yelled at the top of my lungs as he booked full speed through the dog door and outside to the backyard with a big piece of cauliflower firmly gripped in his mouth. The piece …
Once again, I'm seeking advice from my more erudite and experienced readers... Peat, and sometimes Angus, but always at least one of them wakes us about 4 a.m. wanting to be fed. This has been going on for more than two years. Peat's the ring-leader, and most aggressive. He'll start by pacing and softly whining, …
Haris Papadopoulos, Molly, and some evidence of a good day's chukar hunting on Cyprus Haris Papadopoulos contacted me through another blog of mine about two years ago with some questions about our dogs and the Brittany breed in general. He lives in Cyprus. We've been in touch since then, and just a few days ago …
Not everyone sleeps with dogs. We do. One of the purest pleasures I know is, upon getting into bed, having Peat collapse himself onto my left side, pressing his back against my ribs and torpedoing his head across my armpit, his nose inches from my face, and his relaxed amber eyes peering into mine as …
My stress doesn't come close to the stress wildlife endured this winter, but it's been there daily, mainly in the form of wonder and hope. In a phone call with my dad earlier this winter, I lamented the tough conditions for chukar and the rest, and he reminded me of this wonderful Emily Dickinson poem: …
After my hunt with Peat last weekend, in fairly deep snow, I was surprised to find a tiny tick on him. A month or so ago, after a short walk near the Boise River, I noticed at least a half-dozen tiny ticks inside one of his ears. We've never found ticks, until now, on the …
We saw lots of birds last Friday, but they were really jumpy, and - whatever the reason - the dogs couldn't or didn't hold them. I sprayed plenty of lead over the landscape (something I pretend doesn't bother me, but it does, although obviously not enough to cause me to do anything about it, yet). …
When I was 37 I moved to Boise, Idaho, where I knew nobody and didn’t have a job. I rented a house, my first time living in a house since I left my parents’ house after graduating high school. It was a small house, with a small backyard closed in with a white picket fence …
As we finished our hunt the other day, and were milling about the truck a pickup drove by us and then backed up. The driver said, "Hey, just wanted to let you know I've got some traps up there." We'd walked right past his traps, and of course our dogs did, too. He showed us …
The current issue of Gray's Sporting Journal (Bird Hunting Edition, August 2015, available at Barnes & Noble) features a piece I wrote about Angus a couple years ago. The best thing about the piece is Rachel Teannalach's painting, which I wrote about in an earlier post. Still, the piece is heartfelt and makes a nice …