A fine hunting trip to the North Dakota prairie

A picturesque North Dakota morning. A majestic point by Northwoods Rolls Royce (Blue Shaquille x Houston’s Belle’s Choice, 2013). Not too shabby.

September seems to be when a good number of our clients who live in the Midwest head to North Dakota and Montana. Judging by the reports and the accompanying photos, both owners and dogs had fun.

Jerry, too, headed west. He loaded up our trailer with seven bird dogs—five adults and two puppies.

• Northwoods Grits (Northwoods Blue Ox x Northwoods Chablis, 2011)
• Northwoods Rolls Royce (Blue Shaquille x Houston’s Belle’s Choice, 2013)
• Northwoods Comet (CH Rock Acre Blackhawk x Northwoods Vixen, 2018)
• Northwoods Stardust (RU-CH Erin’s Prometheus x Northwoods Carly Simon, 2019) call name Dusty
• Northwoods Gale (Northwoods Grits x Northwoods Minerva, 2020), call name Windy
• Northwoods Redbreast (Northwoods Rolls Royce x Northwoods Minerva, 2021), call name Robin
• Northwoods Talisker (Swift Rock Jetson x Swift Rock Granny, 2021), call name Tally

The dogs Jerry chose for this hunting trip are (front to back): Grits, Windy, Dusty, Royce, Comet, Robin and Tally.

His first stop was a visit with my brother, Jake, who owns a nice piece of property in east central North Dakota. Jake is a passionate waterfowl hunter but was tickled to take a walk for sharptails with Jerry and a couple setters.

Jerry then headed farther west and teamed up with Minnesota friends Ian Mactavish and Frankie Kartch. Besides the good hunting, they ate well. One tradition is always sharptail kabobs, grilled over charcoal.

Two clients who met Jerry in western North Dakota for a couple days of hunting are Tom Beauchamp with his two tricolor setters Lupin (Northwoods Grits x Northwoods Stardust, 2021) and Ellie (Northwoods Grits x CH I’m Blue Gert, 2014); and Frank Ilijanic with his black-and-white pointers out of CH Rock Acre Blackhawk x Northwoods Vixen, Jade in 2015 and Jax in 2018.

Later, he hunted with Frank Ilijanic and Tom Beauchamp, clients from Michigan and Indiana, respectively. The idea was first hatched this summer when Frank and Tom picked up their eight-week-old setter puppies out of the Northwoods Grits x Northwoods Stardust litter.

Frank’s young pointer Jax (CH Rock Acre Blackhawk x Northwoods Vixen, 2018) bounds across the prairie, happily retrieving a sharptail.

Frank deserves an award of some kind for not only was that setter his second puppy this year—his first a pointer female out of Northwoods Comet by CH True Confidence—but these puppies join two other Northwoods dogs. In 2015, Frank bought Jade, a pointer female out of CH Rock Acre Blackhawk x Northwoods Vixen. He was on our list for a repeat of that breeding in 2018 when he chose a male, Jax.

In addition to Tom’s 2021 puppy, he brought Ellie, his first Northwoods dog, a seven-year-old female setter out of CH I’m Blue Gert by Northwoods Grits.

Inducing emesis in dogs

The only items you need to induce emesis in a dog is a bottle 3% hydrogen peroxide and either a large syringe (no needle) or a turkey baster.

Some rudimentary medical knowledge can be very helpful when caring for a bird dog. In some circumstances, that knowledge can be vital to the dog’s life.

Inducing emesis, i.e., vomiting or throwing up, is one of those pieces of information.

Jerry and I have induced emesis several times. Once was when actual tick collars were still common and one dog ate the tick collar off its playmate in the exercise pen. Another time a dog ate an entire hard plastic chew toy that was rated for “Serious Chewers.” (We could actually piece the toy together afterward—not a bad way to ensure all the pieces are accounted for.)

Here’s a list of potentially dangerous items.
• chewed material from collars, chew toys and and other small items
• cleaning products
• human medications and pain relievers
• toxic foods like chocolate, grapes and raisins
• poison from garden and yard chemicals
• mouse, rat and insect poisons
• poisonous plants

Inducing emesis is an easy solution. The crucial element is time. The procedure must be done when the contents are still in stomach, which means within about 2 hours.

The only medication you need is a bottle of 3% hydrogen peroxide. The only tool you need is a big syringe (140cc with no needle) or a turkey baster.

Use 1 teaspoon hydrogen peroxide for every 10 lbs. of dog weight. (For example: use 4 teaspoons for a 40-lb. dog.) Squirt into the dog’s throat, behind the tongue. Wait for 10 – 15 minutes. It’s always worked on that first dose for us but, if necessary, repeat once more.

If your dog is showing signs of an adverse reaction or you’re at all unsure, call your vet and/or contact a poison hotline.

Do NOT induce emesis if the ingested item could be:
• glass, other sharp/hard object, batteries
• chemicals like bleach, oven cleaners, drain cleaners
• petroleum products such as gas, kerosene, motor oil

Possibilities of problems with those dangerous items are ingested include further damage to the esophagus or the possibility of the substance getting inhaled into the lungs.