So the past few weeks have been kinda slow for me – but still, a few notable things happened. If that makes any sense at all. First, this past weekend marked the final field trial of the season, at least in Florida. While most of the country is thawing out and gearing up to get back into the field, Florida is heating up, so mid to late March is about the latest that you’ll really see any events happening down here. We can manage to train our dogs over the summer, but that typically is all done and over with by 9 am – after that, it’s just too damn hot to really be able to do much with them saf ..read more

Anyone who has had dogs for any appreciable length of time fully understands the impact that they can have on you. Throughout my life, I’ve had several dogs that were wonderful companions and friends. I’ve had dogs that were a joy to have for however long they were on this earth, which was never long enough, for any of them, no matter how many years I had with them. And of course, there’s always that one dog. The one dog that grabs your heart in a way you can’t explain. There isn’t even any logic to it; they all greet you at the door wagging, they’re all happy to see you, they all love playing ..read more

I can’t believe it’s been a month since my last post, and for that I apologize. Enough random things occupied my mind that I just didn’t get back to it. On the plus side, the house I’m building is well underway! The walls are going up and framing started last week, so it’s quickly gone from a dug-up spot of land to something resembling a house! OK, back to South Dakota. My last post talked about Ricky, and ended with the promise of getting to Jack and Eleanor soon. So. about Jack. He’s a little crazy, he’s stubborn, he’s got a mind of his own, but he’s a helluva bird dog. He’s been slowing dow ..read more

I met up with my cousins Friday night at the farmhouse that we would call home for the next 3 days. Much revelry followed – and thankfully pheasant hunting can’t start before 10 am, so we had plenty of time to recover and grab some breakfast before meeting up with our guide and hitting the fields. I took my truck separately so I had somewhere to keep Ricky, Eleanor, and Jack while we were out in the fields. First up was Jack, although we drew a blank on the first field we hit. We had much better luck on the second field! We fanned out along both sides of a thick tree line, blockers at the far ..read more

I’ll start off with saying – TomBoy is OK. She’s currently snoozing on the couch of my camper as I’m up at the sports bar, drinking a cold one, watching the Bucs game, and writing this post. This will be a short one, but I wanted to share a nice moment I had with my best girl this afternoon. I got TomBoy and Ricky for the weekend and took them out to the hunt club. I don’t get to see them very often anymore, much less get them out to shoot some birds over. It makes weekends like this that much more special. I miss my dogs. Probably the hardest part of this entire split has been not having all ..read more

So I’ve been back for over a month but have just had a hard time getting around to sitting back down to write about my epic trip to South Dakota. It was a fantastic time with a lot of great relatives, and driving the 1,692 miles each way was TOTALLY worth it to have my own dogs with me. The last you heard from me, I was sitting in a Cracker Barrel in Omaha, Nebraska. I had finished driving for the day and was ready to hit the sack for a few hours before finishing the drive up the next day. Backing up a little bit – traveling with dogs has its own set of challenges. You need to drive all day in ..read more

I’m writing to you tonight from a Cracker Barrel in Omaha, Nebraska. I left home yesterday and have been driving out to South Dakota to meet my dad, brother, and a bunch of relatives for our pheasant hunt! Yes, I’m drinking a beer in a Cracker Barrel. That’s just how I roll. Anyhow, it’s about time I introduced y’all to Jack. Jack is 11 years old, brother to Emma Jane (RIP), and the most recent addition to the household. Jack came back to live with us in May of 2020, and he came with me when it came time to divvy up the dogs earlier this year. Let’s just say that Jack is an interesting dog ..read more

Oh boy. This one. Where to even start with her. We bred Emma Jane to a nice boy named Brody in 2018. We said we really wanted a girl out of Emma Jane, and she took us literally – we got a girl. One girl. And no boys.  Luckily for us, that one girl was very healthy and vibrant, and it soon became clear that she had the personality of an entire litter wrapped up in one fat little package. And good lord, was she a fat little puppy. With no competition at the milk bar, Eleanor put on weight like it was going out of style. We were concerned that she was getting too fat, but that concern quick ..read more

Man, I need to step it up on these blog posts if I’m gonna introduce the entire cast of characters before my trip next week! On that note, I’m looking forward to sharing pictures and tales of my experience in South Dakota. I’m packing up Ricky, Eleanor and Jack and heading cross-country to meet up with some relatives for 3 days of pheasant hunting near Burke, South Dakota! It should be a blast and I’m looking forward to spending some time with my relatives and watching some good dogs find birds! One more thing; I apologize for the lack of pics. My home laptop crapped out on me, and loading the ..read more

Oh my. Miss Jane. Better known as ‘the little shit’. One of the sweetest and most frustrating dogs I’ve ever had to deal with. Jane was out of Buffy’s 2nd litter. We hadn’t planned on keeping her, but through a fortunate/unfortunate turn of events, she stayed in our home – hence her full name, SoCo’s Twist of Fate. What happened was that she had a pretty bad reaction to her vaccines as a puppy, so we kept her around until she was healthy enough to place. Of course, we all know how that ends. She was a phenomenal little puppy. Great on her birds, great run, and really the cutest puppy we’ve ev ..read more