Yesterday morning it was cool enough to work dogs but I had some things I had to do, so I didn’t get them out. This morning it was about 75 degrees when I got up at 6:00 am. Too hot for the dogs and the pigeons. But all day I’ve thought about how things have changed since I started quail hunting.
This morning a friend called and said he didn’t mean to call me, he was trying to find his cell phone number and hit mine by mistake. Then he couldn’t hang up before it called me. Twenty five years ago very few people had cell phones and you really did hang the home phones up when you were through. It was either that or my oldest grandson, Spencer Eades, turned 25 years old yesterday. But one or the other caused me to think of the difference in the technology of today and 45 to 50 years ago.
A lot of years ago I had a dog by the name of Rusty. He was really good dog but when he got over 150 yards away he didn’t think he had to listen to me. I could call him to me if he was 75 yards or a hundred yards away but let him get 150 yards and he was on his on. Electric collars had been out for quite awhile but I didn’t have one or a lot of money to invest in one. I did my research by looking for the one I could afford. It wasn’t a name brand but I thought it would work for me. I ordered it.
When it came in Rusty and I went hunting. He started down a hedge row and when he got about 75 yards away I called him and he came right back. I let him go again and when he got about a hundred yards away I called and he came back. The next time I let him get about 200 yards away and called him. He acted like he didn’t hear me. I called again and he still couldn’t hear me. I held the button down on the transmitter to the electric collar and he went to the other side of the hedge row and started hunting back to me. An electric collar improved his hearing.
I called him at various distances from me that day and only had to use the e-collar one other time, all day. He would still try me for a few hunts but mostly he would come back when called. I put the e-collar on him each time I took him hunting. About a month after I got the e-collar we were hunting east of Nevada, Missouri and Rusty went into a pond, I don’t remember whether he was retrieving a bird or just waded in to get a drink but he went into the pond. When the water got up to his stomach he started screaming. I knew the collar was shocking him with no one touching the button. I grabbed the transmitter and pulled the battery out. He quit screaming.
I pulled the e-collar off him and when I got home I called the company that made it. The person I talked to was concerned about my dog. She asked several times if I thought he would be alright. He was fine. I sent the e-collar and transmitter back to the company. A few days later I got a package from them with a transmitter and e-collars for 2 dogs. A few years ago I threw them away. They had never been used. But e-collars have come a long way since then and I use them now.
A few years later I bred Rusty to a daughter of Boseann’s Mosely and got a tri-colored female for pick of the litter. May have been the best dog I’ve ever had. She could really run. She pointed, backed and retrieved with almost no training. The first bird she ever retrieved I dropped in a large ditch that the sides were almost straight up and down. She went over the edge and when I looked down she was about 25 feet below me with the bird in her mouth. I called her and she tried to get up the side to me but fell back. She kept trying to get back up but couldn’t. I laid down on my stomach and called her and she got almost to me then fell back. She still had the quail. I kept calling her and on the third or fourth try I finally got a hold of her collar and pulled her to the top. She laid the quail in my hand.
Susie would hunt with me but if we didn’t get into birds pretty quick she started reaching out. If she pointed she would be there as long as the birds held. Most of the time I could find her. Then I got a beeper collar for her but it seemed like she would even go farther. But the beeper helped. Then, again, I decided to get an e-collar to see if I could get her to hunt with me.
I ordered an e-collar but continued to hunt Susie while I waited. I was hunting near Atchison, Kansas and some guys were hunting close enough that I could hear their gun shots. They were into more birds than I was and Susie joined them. They saw that she was an excellent dog that pointed, backed and retrieved so when they left they took her with them. By the time I figured out she was gone and started looking they were long gone. I put a jacket where I turned her out then drove the roads looking for her. I checked the jacket from time to time and asked everyone I saw if they had seen or heard her. She still had the beeper collar on. I looked for her until dark.
I ran ads on the radio and in the Atchison, Kansas newspaper. I was at the fire station the next day but my son-in-law, Robert Charpie, drove the roads and talked to anyone he saw but no one had seen or heard her. The next day I came back and searched all day. I have never seen her again.
I called the supplier about the e-collar I had ordered and they said UPS had returned it to them because they couldn’t find my house. They had my phone number but didn’t call they just returned it. I will always wonder if I had had that e-collar for the week that UPS had it, would I have been able to keep her with me? Would I have been able to have her all of her life?
I still want a dog that will run but I want to know where it’s at. As soon as I herd about GPS collars for dogs I bought one. In the next post I will get into my experiences with the Garmin GPS and with other technology in dog training equipment.
