Story By Bob Fringer
Last summer I lost one of my most favorite hunting buddies. I met him about 15 years ago in Raleigh, North Carolina. He was frightened, bewildered and a bit groggy after arriving at the Raleigh-Durham Airport after a long flight from Kansas City, Missouri. I could see that he had not regained his equilibrium as he staggered to me and meekly put his head between my knees. I scratched his ears, patted his head and reassured him that everything was O.K. My new friend was an eight month old English Setter. We became immediate buddies. That bond remained until he died on June 23, 2005.
I called him Duffy, naming him after his previous owner, Jim Duffy. His thick white coat was dappled with small lemon specks. As he grew older, he carried himself with the style and grace similar to those old English Setter poses you see on hunting calendars in hardware stores and auto repair shops.
As I look back over our relationship, I’ m not certain whether I owned Duffy or he owned me. We spent the first couple of years getting to know each other’s peculiarities. I was a slow deliberate hunter while he was a tough, wide-ranging, hardheaded dog that wanted to go, go, go. I tried every trick known to mankind and then some to keep him close while we were in the field. I think I must have worn out 5 whistles during those first couple of years! It wasn’t until I finally resorted to an electronic training collar that I finally gained some resemblance of control over him. He possessed a drive that knew no bounds. With limitless determination he attacked the brush-laded cut-overs of Bertie and Hertford counties, the briar-clad ditches of Hyde County and the wide, spacious grasslands of Nebraska.
He developed into a pretty good bird-hunting dog but would have been much better if he had an experienced trainer (not me) and an ample supply of quail to hunt. Duffy always tried his best. He never handled every covey of quail properly when he found but, then, I never hit every quail he pointed either. I must say that we had many great times together.
As he reached his 10th year I could see the sands of time slowly beginning to run out. After a hard hunt he couldn’t leap up into the dog box like he had done so easily in the past. During the last year he was content to run along the paths and field edges rather than going into the thick cover. Then, again, I was also looking for the easy way pathways!
Last summer it became apparent that those muscles that had propelled his lean body through countless miles of thickets, briars and open fields were no longer up to the task. Then, one morning he could not even get out of his doghouse. The spirit was willing but his body could not respond. Duffy had hunted his last hunt.
Good bye old friend, I’ll remember all those good, and some not so good, times we had together. I can still visualize that icy morning when you made your first solid point on a covey of birds huddled beneath a large wild rose bush that was covered with a beautiful coating of frozen rain. That scene is etched into my brain. You gave me many fond memories. Thank you. I’ll miss you.
One of the greatest things about the Internet is the way one blog will get articles from another and stretch the audience. Bob Fringer is a great writer, and Ben McKean came across this article when I posted it. Ben asked permission to post it on his blog. Bob of course said yes, and if you have an interest in English Setters I highly recommend his blog.
You can find Ben's blog at http://englishsetterspeak.blogspot.com/
Scan down a ways and you will see Bob's smiling face!
