Traveling Pointing Dogs

Tur Bo’s leg where he got hung in a fence.

Lady’s neck wound

Lady’s wounds

I may get back to working dogs next week but I have been thinking about some of the tough dogs I have owned. Once when my vet was sewing one of my dogs up he said he enjoyed working on bird dogs because they were always tough.

Last hunting season Tur Bo got hung in a barb wire fence that was lying on the ground. Most of the wire was covered by dirt but there was a 10 foot strand that was about 8 inches off the ground. The wire caught him at the knee, (or elbow). Whatever you call where the front leg bends. It ripped a triangular piece of skin loose and was still attached when I found him.

Tur Bo had been missing for a few minutes and I checked the Garmin GPS and it showed him on point about 75 yards in front of me. I got close and saw him lying on the ground. I couldn’t see the fence. It was hot and I thought he was lying down to cool off. That wasn’t like him but I called him to me. He stood and tried to come. I saw that his leg was caught.

As I walked to him he tried 2 or 3 times to come to me. He never yelped or made any noise. The flap of skin was wound over the wire and there wasn’t enough slack to just pull the skin off the barb. I didn’t have anything to cut the wire with so I had to take my knife and slice through the skin to cut him loose from the wire. His tail was wagging the whole time. He never made a sound while I was sawing on his skin. I didn’t have a leash with me so I had to let him run on the way back to the truck. He went back to hunting as though nothing was wrong. Now I have a pair of wire cutters and a leash in my hunting vest.

A couple of years ago I was hunting the Cooper Wildlife Area near Woodward, Oklahoma when Lucky ran in front of me shaking his head, then he would rub his face on the ground. I called him to me. He had about 25 porcupine quills in his mouth. This was before I started carrying pliers in my vest. We hunted back to the truck and I put the other dogs up.

I found some needle nose pliers in the truck. Lucky came in and put his front feet on the tail gate. I yanked a few quills out and he never yelped. After I pulled a few he dropped down and walked around shaking his head then he reared back up and I pulled more out. He took a walk 3 or 4 times before I got all of the quills out. He never made a sound when I yanked the quills out. I know he was happy when I got the last one out.

Lucky is 11 years old now and when he was about 4 I was hunting him near Polo, Missouri at the Bonanza Wildlife area. He ran by me and he was bleeding from his mouth. Dogs often get their tongues cut by briers when they are hunting. We were on the way back to the truck so I didn’t think too much of it. We got to the truck and he jumped onto the tailgate. Blood was still coming from his mouth and when they hit the tailgate each drop was bigger than a quarter.

On the way to the vets, I kept thinking about what a good dog Lucky was and if he bled to death I didn’t even have a pup from him. It was about an hour to the vets and I was really beating myself up for not breeding him. I got to the vets and I was afraid of what I would find when I opened the box. I opened the door and he walked out wagging his tail. He was no longer bleeding.

The vet checked him over and found a real small cut on the tongue. It didn’t even need a stitch but the next time that Dolly came in heat, he became a father.

Then we come to Lady the dog that all other dog’s toughness are measured by, at least by me. A friend and I were hunting near Pratt, Kansas. He had a pointer and a German wire haired pointer. I only had Lady at the time. We got to an area we wanted to hunt and turned all three dogs out. The pointer and wire hair went about 15 yards and stopped. We had turned them out in a large patch of sand burrs. It didn’t seem to bother Lady. We went ahead and hunted the area thinking the other two dogs would join us. Lady found 2 coveys of quail and some singles. When we got back close to the truck the two dogs had not moved. Lady ran back to the truck and I loaded her in the dog box. The sand burrs didn’t seem to bother her.

Another time I was hunting in northern Missouri on some private property that was leased by a hunting club I belonged to. I had had pneumonia and was still weak from it but was trying to hunt. Lady tried to cross a woven wire fence with a couple of strands of barb wire above. She was almost over when she got one of her hind legs caught in between the strands of barbed wire. She had a long cut on the leg and was hanging off the ground. I took my vest off and put it over her head. No matter how much your dog loves you it will eat you up when it’s hurting.

I lifted her from the wire and set her on the ground. She was bleeding from the cut but she went right back to hunting. I was too weak from the pneumonia to carry her. I walked the half mile back to the truck and she hunted the whole way. I got her to the vet and he sewed her up. She never made a sound when she got hung in the fence nor when I lifted her off the fence.

When she was 13 years old she was attacked by a huge mule deer when we were hunting near Pratt, Kansas. The deer was bedded down and when she came close he jumped to his feet and slammed her to the ground. (I wrote this story in it’s entirety in October of 2013. If you haven’t read it go to the October 2013 archives and read the story.) When the buck stood up she was impaled on his antlers. Another dog came close and he lowered his head and she slid off. The other dogs ran the deer off.

We were over 3/4 mile from the truck. I checked Lady out and only saw 2 wounds. I small cut along the ribs and a puncture on her left hip. There was a little blood welling in the puncture on her hip but other wise there was no blood. She walked back to the truck. A couple of times she went out like she was going to hunt but quickly returned to my side. She yelped when I lifted her onto the tail gate. I washed both wounds with some antibiotic wash I carry in my truck.

I was not sure whether she would be alive when I took her from the dog box at the vets office but she walked out of the dog box wagging. She whined when I set her on the ground but she walked into the vets office with her tail up and wagging. The vet told me to leave her and give him a call about 4:00 pm.

I called about 3:30 and he told me he had sewn up 5 places with the one around her neck being the most severe. I didn’t even know she had been cut on the neck. He kept her over night. Lady was an English setter and she had lots of hair. The long hair hid most of the cuts. The cut on her neck went all the way around except for about 2 inches under her chin. The vet didn’t sew up one of the places I knew about so he had found 4 cuts I didn’t see.

The deer attacked this 13 year old dog the second Sunday of November. She didn’t hunt the rest of November and some of December but she was back hunting most of December and all of January. She still pointed birds and retrieved. She was the best retriever I have ever had.

Lady would have been 14 years old in May but in mid April she started acting funny when I turned her out to clean her pen. She didn’t seem to be in pain she just seemed confused. I put her on her house and petted her. I knew the end was near. She liked to lick my arms when I put her on her house and talked to her. I told her if she was ready to go to go ahead. Two mornings later she was in her house dead when I went to the kennel.

Lady was not the best bird dog I have ever had but she was the best retriever. She was also the toughest dog I’ve ever seen. She’s been gone for 2 years and I still miss her.

Lady pointing Wendy backing

Lucky

Luke on point

Tur Bo

Blaze

Luke

I have some health issues that are going to keep me in the house for a couple of weeks so I have no opportunity to work the young dogs. Since I think about dogs or quail hunting most of the time I decided to write about some of the dogs I have owned.

I got an English setter pup from a litter raised by my good friend, Dennis Garrison, in the ’70’s. I don’t remember why but the kids had a good reason for naming him Scamp. He was white and orange and about 7 weeks old when we brought him home.

Before bird season opened I ran him with another dog I owned at the time on some wild birds that were close to the house. I could turn the dogs loose and walk to where I wanted to run them. I didn’t have to put leads on or anything. We just crossed a fence into a large pasture that had a couple of wild coveys.

Scamp was several months old when I decided he needed to walk on a lead. When I hooked a leash to his collar and stepped off he laid down. Whatever dog training book I was reading at the time said just drag them along the ground. Pretty soon they will get up and walk. As I drug him across the back yard with him making gurgling sounds my kids thought I was killing him. Scamp was gurgling and both of my kids were screaming so I stopped.

I was telling someone at work about this problem and they suggested that I hook him to another dog that would lead and go for a walk. I got a snap that you leash two dogs together with and hooked him to my other bird dog and we started across the yard. It was a week day and the kids were at school. We went all the way across the yard to the road and started down the road. We went down the hill then up another hill and turned the corner for a long block and Scamp was being dragged on his side. We went about half way down the next block before he decided to get up and walk. He was broke to lead. Now I know that if you will just stake a dog out several times that they will learn to lead on their own. Or better yet, put ropes on them at about 3 weeks old and let them drag them around the rest of their litter mates. They will break each other.

Back in those days we just took dogs hunting until they made a bird dog. There were plenty of wild birds and if you took the dog often enough he would make a bird dog. Scamp made a good bird dog. When he went on point he would stay on point for as long as the birds would hold.

My son, Ryan, and I were hunting near Warrensburg, Missouri one day and we lost Scamp. We looked and looked for him. About 45 minutes later we finally found him on point but he was sitting down. We walked in front of him and a large covey of quail flushed. I don’t remember if we killed any birds or not. I said something to Ryan about him being on point so long and Ryan said, “yeah, and did you see that look he gave you.” He wasn’t happy with me.

Scamp never retrieved but he would hunt dead really well. But as soon as he found the dead bird he would roll it over then go back to hunting, so you had to really watch him. Once in a great while he would pick a bird up but if he did he was going to bury it.

Kermit Maxwell and I were hunting near Pattonsberg, Missouri. Scamp was the only dog we had that day and on the first covey Kermit and I both dropped a quail. Scamp found mine but after a long search we couldn’t come up with Kermit’s bird. We finally went on.

Scamp pointed another covey in the edge of a corn field and after the smoke cleared we had 3 birds down. Two of the quail were in front of me in the corn field and I picked them up. I saw that Scamp had the other bird and was going away from us. I told Kermit to watch him and we followed after Scamp. Scamp stopped and dug a hole. He dropped the quail in then used his nose to push the dirt back over it and patted it with his foot and went on. When he came by us he still had dirt on his nose.

Kermit was almost rolling on the ground with laughter. He said, “I know that’s what happened to the first bird that we couldn’t find.” Although it was early in the morning when this took place Kermit would have been happy to have gone home right then. He wanted to tell people about Scamp.

Another time Dennis Garrison and I were hunting in Kansas and stopped at a place in Miami county. We had hunted somewhere else before stopping here and only needed a quail or two for a limit. A man and his wife with 3 English setters were just getting back to their truck when we pulled up. We stopped and talked to him. When we asked how he had done he said, “boys, there are no quail here. If there had of been these dogs would have found them.”

We ate our lunch, which in those days was probably a coke and snicker candy bar, after the man and his wife left. Dennis had at least one dog and I turned Scamp loose. We had covered most of the small farm and were thinking maybe the man was right about there not being any birds when we noticed that Scamp was missing. After about 10 minutes we found him buried in some thick cover on point. He had a covey of quail. A little later Dennis’s dog pointed a covey and we finished out our limits. I’m not trying to say our dogs were better than the man’s who had just left. The best dog in the world can’t point the bird if he’s on the wrong side.

When Scamp was about 11 years old Dennis and I were hunting near Warrensburg, Missouri. We had just crossed a creek and as we neared a fence Scamp ran in front of me and ran into a fence post. I thought that was odd but we continued on. Then I saw him run into a tree and it dawned on me that he was blind. We started back to the truck but I didn’t have a leash with me so I just had to let him run. He was in some cover in front of me when Dennis said, “we got a point.” I said, “go ahead, I’m going to get Scamp back to the truck.” He said, “It’s Scamp on point.” I said, “I’ll be right there.” We walked in front of him and a single quail flushed my way and I killed it. That was the last bird killed over Scamp.

Scamp lived through the winter but the next spring I could see that it was time to ease his pain. I took him to see Dr. Becker at the Independence Animal Hospital and he assured me that I had made the right decision. I looked at Dr. Becker and tears were dripping off his chin just as they were off mine. Scamp was a good dog.

Tur Bo in front Dolly in back

Dolly

Lucky