Our current group of puppies love the snow. From left, Rose (Rufus Del Fuego x Northwoods Valencia, 2021) and littermates Mac and Van (Northwoods Sir Gordon x Houston’s Nelly Bly, 2021) soak up the sun on top of a dog house in the exercise pen.
This winter of 2021/2022 is the first Jerry and I have spent at our home base in Minnesota in 15 years. Stints in Texas, Oklahoma and Tennessee preceded Thomasville, Georgia, a place we called home for nine winters.
It’s been “interesting,” as we say in Minnesota. Seemingly endless shoveling of kennel runs and clearing of driveways and sidewalks is losing its charm. The adult dogs seem bored. Playing in a fenced-in area—no matter how big—doesn’t compare to hunting wild bobwhites.
But our three puppies from late fall litters are tigers in the cold weather…and 15” of snow doesn’t faze them at all. They run around on paths Jerry has cleared, climb up on snowbanks and play tug-of-war with ropes.
It’s now March and we can sense the downhill slide of winter. The angle of the sun—much higher in the sky—is starting to generate real warmth. Too, we’ve gained more than two hours of daylight since the winter solstice.
On sunny days now, snow drips off roofs and driveways reappear. In the woods, chickadees begin their spring “fee bee” song. And for dogs and humans alike, enticing scents arise from the previously frozen landscape.
The dog houses in the exercise pens look like igloos.
Mac (Northwoods Sir Gordon x Houston’s Nelly Bly, 2021) aces his training of the Up command. Other commands Jerry is teaching our three puppies include Place, Sit, Kennel and Down.
Native Americans named the full moons to help track the passing of time. Different tribes had different names but one for February seems especially suitable: The Snow Moon.
In the evenings, we stoke up the wood stove, pour an adult beverage or two and hang around with bird dogs.
“Good Dog” by Alex Gregory. Originally published in The New Yorker.
The month of January can be brutal in Minnesota, especially for residents who like to be outside with their dogs.
Although not the coldest state in the country (Alaska and North Dakota are #1 and #2), the winter weather here is formidable. Single-digit days, sub-zero nights and a biting wind from the north are bad enough but most troublesome are seemingly endless systems called “clippers” that drop enough snow to force Jerry and me outside with snow blowers and shovels and brooms to keep the driveway open and the kennel runs clean.
The dogs are snug inside the kennel due to in-floor electric heat and comfy Kuranda beds. In the evenings, Jerry and I hunker down. The NFL playoff games have been spectacular; and we can totally escape by bingeing on Yellowstone episodes.
As always, though, it’s good to keep things in perspective…and to laugh. We spotted this New Yorker cartoon by Alex Gregory while at Dr. Wayne Scanlan’s Otter Lake Animal Care Center last week.
This is a framed greeting card by very clever cartoonist Sandra Boynton. I bought the card at least 30 years ago in The Bibelot Shops, a favorite St. Paul store, sadly now closed.
“The three great elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of outer ocean on a beach.” ~ Henry Beston, The Outermost House, 1928
For one year, Henry Beston lived in a small—but not austere—cottage on Cape Cod. His original intent was a two-week visit but he was totally enraptured by all that surrounded him and so he stayed.
Comparisons to Henry David Thoreau’s year at Walden Pond have been made but, in my opinion, Beston out-Thoreau’s Thoreau. There is no ego, condescension or New England ascetism evident in Beston. More importantly, Beston is a superior writer; his prose is eloquent and strong. The ocean, beach, wind, storms, birds and animals of the Cape all inspire him.
In a passage that leapt off the page, Beston wrote poignantly about mankind’s relationship to animals.
All dog lovers will understand.
“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”
Juniper (CH True Confidence x Northwoods Comet, 2021) retrieves a big, fat rooster. Juniper is owned by Joey Paxman and Amanda Allpress of Montana.
Jerry and I consider the first hunting season of a puppy’s life to be a crucial element in its development. A puppy’s mind is like a sponge, eager to absorb anything and everything.
For the owner of the puppy, that first fall can be a blast. There’s no pressure. Very little handling is necessary and definitely no “Whoa” command is involved. Just take the puppy onto the prairie and into the woods and expose it to as many wild birds as possible.
Even though Nemadji (Northwoods Grits x Northwoods Stardust, 2021) has one sharp-tailed grouse in her mouth, she’s eyeing others on the ground in front. Madji is owned by Ron and Lora Nielsen of Minnesota.
The puppy can really do no wrong. Use its nose to hunt for birds. Find the bird. Flush it. Loose the scent entirely. It doesn’t matter. The puppy is learning with every exposure.
Eventually, the proverbial lightbulb goes on and the puppy gets it. The puppy points, perhaps momentarily, but it does stop.
After a successful hunt, Rickey (CH True Confidence x Northwoods Comet, 2021) looks cool and calm. Rickey is owned by Jake and Nicole Beveridge of Minnesota.
Puppies from our pointer litter out of Comet by True Confidence and our two setter litters, Grits x Stardust and Rolls Royce x Minerva, had ample opportunity.
Kudos to the owners for taking their puppy hunting. And the scenery is pretty nice, too.
Lupin (Northwoods Grits x Northwoods Stardust, 2021) is learning so much during her first season on the prairie. Lupin is owned by Tom and Tammy Beauchamp of Indiana.
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.
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.
Northwoods Jones (Northwoods Grits x Houston’s Nelly Bly, 2020)
Northwoods Jones is one of seven tricolor puppies whelped out of our 2020 breeding of proven sire Northwoods Grits to first-time-but-oh-so-worthy dam, Houston’s Nelly Bly.
Jones is a perfect male model for that litter as he has the handsome, blocky head and muzzle spots of his sire and the warm, expressive eyes of his dam. Most essential, from both parents he inherited prowess in the field—bird finding, confidence, style—and an ideal temperament for the home.
Jones is owned by Kali Parmley of Utah. Kali is the editor in chief of Gun Dog and Backcountry Hunter magazines. What a perfect fit for Jones.
Northwoods Queen Anne’s Lace (Northwoods Grits x Northwoods Minerva, 2020) Photo by Eukanuba Sporting Dog
On a quintessential summer day last July, Zenas Hutcheson and his wife, Susanne, from Minnesota, chose a pretty, orange-and-white female puppy from the litter of mostly tricolors.
The puppy—call name Lacey—matured over the winter months into a strong, beautifully conformed dog. This spring, Zenas and Lacey attended a woodcock banding certification session at Pineridge Grouse Camp in Remer, Minn. A Eukanuba photo shoot was also taking place and Lacey was chosen to be photographed.
Even though Lacey is still young, Zenas reported that she did “very well on all but one test. Next spring she will be ready.”
Twelve-day-old puppies out of Northwoods Stardust by Northwoods Grits snuggle in their nest.
Jerry and I never tire of watching puppies of any age. There is something especially endearing, though, about tiny, vulnerable puppies when they’re sleeping. Not only do they always snuggle together in some conglomeration of bodies and limbs but they seem to dream.
