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Besides the obvious charm of this strip— Snoopy in his bathing suit, Lucy content in the pool—there is more.
Some clients already know the trick. (I’m thinking especially of Chris Bye.) For many years, Jerry and I filled up two pools with cold water. After a summer morning conditioning run, the dogs loved those pools. They drank, plopped down, and swirled and splashed around.
In other words, dogs allowed.
Pointers Northwoods Comet (CH Rock Acre Blackhawk x Northwoods Vixen, 2018) and Northwoods Vixen (CH Westfall’s Black Ice x Northwoods Prancer, 2011).
Poetry is an entirely different form of creative writing from fiction and nonfiction. There are fierce devotees and equally strong detractors.
Mary Oliver might make at least some of the latter group enjoy a poem or two.
Over Oliver’s lifetime (1935 – 2019), she wrote 20 books of poetry and six of prose. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for American Primitive, a collection of poetry. She won many other distinguished awards including the National Book Award in 1992 and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
She was an introverted, private person and also a lover of dogs. She devoted one collection, Dog Songs, to them. Here is a poem about Percy.
Little Dog’s Rhapsody in the Night
He puts his cheek against mine
and makes small, expressive sounds.
And when I’m awake, or awake enough
he turns upside down, his four paws
in the air
and his eyes dark and fervent.
“Tell me you love me,” he says.
“Tell me again.”
Could there be a sweeter arrangement? Over and over
he gets to ask.
I get to tell.
~ Mary Oliver
Dog Songs
English-bred May, sired by CH Conneywarren Jason of British Labradors.
Oliver lived for about four decades in Provincetown, Mass., where she developed her passion for the ocean, tides, birds and the Cape Cod seashore. She always carried a pad and pen on her solitary daily walks and, as inspiration came to her, she jotted down lines. Here is a poem about the Cape shore.
I Go Down To The Shore In The Morning
I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall—
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.
~ Mary Oliver
A Thousand Mornings
CH Northwoods Sir Gordon (RU-CH Erin’s Prometheus x Northwoods Carly Simon, 2016) and owner/handler Ben McKean.
A key element of any field trial is the quality of the judges. They can name worthy winners or they can, by ignorance mainly, screw up it completely. They perhaps are more important than anything else—including weather, venue, dogs or handlers.
In other words, if the judges are good, then the trial will be good.
In early April in the Eau Claire County Forest neat Augusta, Wisc., Ben McKean ran his male setter Northwoods Sir Gordon (RU-CH Erin’s Prometheus x Northwoods Carly Simon, 2016) at the Region 19 Amateur Walking Shooting Dog Championship. Ben was fortunate for not only were Scott Anderson and Bill Frahm judging but they decided on a bold finish.
Gordie is a leggy male setter, ruggedly built with a reaching gait. He is a powerful dog and ran a strong, mature race, always searching in likely cover. He was marked with an unproductive in heavy tangled alders and ended his hour birdless.
Scott and Bill did have a dog with a find on one woodcock in the first series but they obviously didn’t feel it was a performance deserving of a champion. What do good judges do in a case like this?
Scott and Bill decided on a call back.
Wasting no time, the judges called handlers, dogs and the gallery together. Emotion and excitement were sky high. Scott and Bill chose two call back dogs and two reserve dogs. Northwoods Atlas (Northwoods Grits x Northwoods Nickel, 2017), owned and handled by Greg Johnson, was a reserve dog while Gordie was their choice to see first on a course known to hold birds.
It took only 12 minutes for Gordie’s bell to stop. Scout Ryan Hough found him on point and when Ben walked in, two woodcock flew. Ben shot his gun and walked back to his dog.
Nothing more was needed. The good judges, by deciding on the call back, had their worthy champion.
Congratulations to Ben and Gordie!
Here is the official report written by Kyle Peterson and published in the American Field: https://www.americanfield.com/result?result_id=977
A young Jim Harrison in the doorway of his cabin in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
The Search for the Genuine is a newly published collection of essays and magazine columns by Jim Harrison. Subtitled Nonfiction, 1970 – 2015, these pieces are reprinted from various sporting magazines—Field & Stream, Sports Illustrated, Outside—and prestigious publications such as Esquire and The New York Times.
Jim Harrison (1937 – 2016) was a best-selling New York Times author of 39 books of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and one children’s book. He is perhaps best known as a poet and for his Legends of the Fall and Dalva novels.
Harrison’s big draw for me is simply his writing. I can read anything he wrote. Beginning with his first paragraph and then his lyrical, eloquent, clear style, I became enthralled. Subject matter included dogs, hunting and fishing but also his big view of life and his big appetites. Along with his cool friends Jimmy Buffett, Tom McGuane and Guy de la Valdene, he shared a zest for life, food (much of which they had shot or caught) and drink.
A few favorite passages.
“Our greatest politician, Thomas Jefferson, said that ‘good wine is a necessity of life for me.’ I agree but he should have said, ‘Good wine and good dogs are necessities of life for me.’”
“Utterly docile and sweet in the cabin or house these are big-running setters suitable for the Southwest and Montana though they shorten up in the denser cover of northern Michigan. When cynics say that our dogs are ‘too far out’ we’ve learned to give a pat answer: ‘That must be where the birds are.’”
“One August morning in the Upper Peninsula Rose had twenty-nine woodcock points in less than two hours. I was slow to admit that I enjoyed this training run as much as hunting.”
This is a long passage with long sentences but, yikes, can he write.
“I’ve begun to believe that some of us are not as evolved as we may think. Up in the country, in my prolonged childhood, I liked best to walk, fish, and hunt where there were few, if any, people. After a ten-year hiatus for college and trying to be Rimbaud, Dostoyevsky, and James Joyce, not to speak of William Faulkner, in New York, Boston, and San Francisco, I found myself back in northern Michigan walking, fishing, and hunting. There are a lot more people now, but there are still plenty of places where they aren’t. Tennis, golf, and drugs didn’t work for me, so for the past thirty years my abiding passions are still centered on upland game birds, fish, and idling around fields, mountains, and the woods on foot, studying habitat but mostly wandering and looking things over.”
“The death of hunting will come not from the largely imagined forces of anti-hunting but from the death of habitat, the continuing disregard for the land in the manner of a psychopath burning down a house and then wondering why he can’t still live there. The illusion of separateness is maddening. We are nature, too, surely as a chimp or trout.”
“Strangely, as you grow older, if you can’t hunt with any of two or three friends, you’d rather hunt alone. Newcomers make the grievous error of talking to your dogs—which are confused by such breaches in taste—or they whine about the weather.”
“I’m very poor at dates and numbers and what happened at what time in our life. But if my wife mentions the name of a dog we’ve owned and loved, I can re-create the dog’s life with us, and consequently my own.”
“Happiness Is a Warm Puppy” is a book written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz. It was first published in 1962 and has since been re-published several times.
Anyone who has ever bought a puppy will agree with this simplest, but truest, of notions.
Photo courtesy of Ruffed Grouse Society
“He was watching a ruffed grouse that was poking along the forest floor, as grouse will do, foraging for seeds or fallen berries, perhaps some remaining leaves of clover.”
So Sam Cook wrote in the opening paragraphs of his piece in the November 30 edition of the Duluth News Tribune. Cook related a story about a friend of his who was deer hunting in the north woods.
“Most deer hunters would agree that it’s pleasant to have a grouse come mooching along during a morning on the stand. Grouse are enjoyable to watch—the way they seem to step carefully over the landscape or hop up to cross a deadfall. They cock their heads to the side often, presumably to get a better look above them, where most potential danger is likely to come from.
“Suddenly, he (the deer hunter) said, he caught the movement of a hawk on the wing. A goshawk, he said. A goshawk on a mission. A goshawk whose eyes were trained on the grouse feeding on the forest floor.
“Goshawks are among the primary predators of ruffed grouse. These raptors are designed to dart and weave through dense aspen forests where ruffed grouse live.
“But, in this scenario, the grouse my friend was watching had caught a glimpse of the goshawk at the last second. The grouse burst into flight and made its escape to heavier cover, just evading the predator’s dive.
Photo courtesy of Cornell Lab of Ornithology
“The goshawk, foiled this time, winged away to continue its hunt for a less wary grouse.”
On that day, there was a happy outcome for the grouse. But as Jerry and I frequently discuss and acknowledge, the natural world is at once beautiful and ruthless.
Sam Cook had been the outdoor writer for the Duluth News Tribune for 38 years. He retired in 2018 and now freelances for the paper. I first knew of Sam Cook in 1977 when we both lived in Ely, Minn. I worked for the original town newspaper, The Ely Miner, and he worked for the rival paper, The Ely Echo.
Greg Johnson, on left, with RU-CH Northwoods Atlas (Northwoods Grits x Northwoods Nickel, 2017) and Ken Moss with CH Moss Meadow Seeker. Back row: Tucker Johnson, Judges Ben McKean and Ryan Hough.
Most people involved in wild bird field trial competition acknowledge that it is a game.
Not only must handlers navigate uncontrollable vagaries like running order, weather conditions, bracemate and the often unpredictable behavior of grouse and woodcock but they also must handle their dogs flawlessly around a one-hour course and abide by the rules of the game. Among those rules are that the dogs should: run a strong, forward race; never lose focus; point with style and intensity; be steady to wing and shot; have no unproductive points; honor the bracemate; finish strong. No mistakes are allowed or the dog is “picked up,” i.e., leashed and walked out of the woods by the handler.
To persevere and win trials—especially big championships—competitors must keep paying the entry fees, showing up and running their dogs.
So it is especially sweet and satisfying when everything aligns and the handler and dog win an important stake—especially a big championship.
The Chippewa Valley Grouse Dog Association held its Wisconsin Cover Dog Championship last week in the Eau Claire County Forest, near Augusta, Wisc. A large entry of 52 dogs was under consideration by judges Ben McKean and Ryan Hough.
After five days of running, Moss Meadow Seeker, owned and handled by Ken Moss, was named champion. With three finds and a strong race that often strained the bell’s limit but always stayed within range, Northwoods Atlas, owned and handled by Greg Johnson, was named runner-up champion.
Five-year-old Atlas, call name Jet, is no stranger to the winner’s circle. Throughout his young career, he has consistently placed in 11 field trials. This is his first championship placement.
Jet was whelped in 2017 out of Northwoods Nickel by Northwoods Grits. Grits was infamous for his bird finding and never-give-up attitude while Nickel added an uncommonly strong yet graceful gait.
And that sweet and satisfying part? After it was all over, Greg commented, “I am walking on air right now.”
“A 15,000-year bond has yielded a much deeper understanding and affection between humans and dogs than between humans and any other animal.”
~ Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens
No wonder Jerry, me and all our clients form such strong bonds with our dogs. It’s in our DNA.
Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari, is not, as the subtitle suggests “a brief history of humankind.” Rather it is a sweeping history of the genus Sapiens and its impact on our planet. Harari is well qualified to write a book of this magnitude. He holds a PhD in History from Oxford University and teaches History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
One aspect that makes this such a good book is the clear, direct writing style of Harari. Another is simply the compelling subject. Where did we come from and how did we get where we are today?
About 50 pages into the book, this passage leapt off the page. From perhaps “15,000 years ago” to perhaps “thousands of years earlier,” dogs and humans began living together.
“The dog was the first animal domesticated by Homo sapiens, and this occurred before the Agricultural Revolution. Experts disagree about the exact date, but we have incontrovertible evidence of domesticated dogs from about 15,000 years ago. They may have joined the human pack thousands of years earlier.
“Dogs were used for hunting and fighting, and as an alarm system against wild beasts and human intruders. With the passing of generations, the two species co-evolved to communicate well with each other. Dogs that were most attentive to the needs and feelings of their human companions got extra care and food, and were more likely to survive. Simultaneously, dogs learned to manipulate people for their own needs. A 15,000-year bond has yielded a much deeper understanding and affection between humans and dogs than between humans and any other animal.”
* Readers of this post shouldn’t need visual proof of the deep bond, affection and love between dogs and people…but just in case, scroll through the photos in our posts and on our sidebar.
Northwoods Big Sky, our T’s puppy, at 18 weeks of age is a hefty 30 pounds and a handsome, bold, spirited, fun puppy.
First, a little history…
When Jerry and I started Northwoods Bird Dogs in 2003, training was our primary service and primary source of income. Breeding setters and pointers was definitely secondary and more a means to personally keep us in good bird dogs. Field trial competition and guiding were a distant third and fourth.
But, as businesses usually do, ours gradually morphed into primarily a breeding facility as more and more clients—especially returning clients—want our puppies and dogs. While we’re extremely proud of our line breeding program that consistently produces our high quality puppies, we’ve known for some time that we’ve needed to find good outside sires and dams, too. But where to find those dogs?
Fast forward to this April…
Jerry and I drove to T’s Doghouse in Farr West, Utah, to pick up an eight-week-old male setter puppy. Jerry had contacted Talmadge Smedley, owner of T’s, and not only did he find excellent bloodlines and dogs but, in Talmadge, he discovered a kindred spirit. Over several conversations last winter, those two discussed training methods, puppy rearing and breeding and all manner of industry issues.
Unfortunately, we were on a very tight schedule when we were in Utah which left little time for face-to-face conversation. But early one morning, Talmadge and his son, Tanner, filmed a session featuring Jerry for their YouTube channel, titled “Training and Breeding Bird Dogs with Jerry Kolter of Northwoods Bird Dogs.”
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