Dogs Are Family Too...Two

With all the burrs and whatnot in the fields, we decided English Setters would be a better breed on the farm.

Our first setter was named Misty.  She was not the prettiest Setter but she did have a strong personality.  Kinda like Princess, our first Siberian.  Anyway, she was displeased with the idea of a litter and eventually took her revenge by having the puppies in our bed.  Our 'live in' helper swore she tried to prevent it but...

Misty had three pups, a small litter.  We easily sold two as they were beautiful pups and we kept one because he seems to be a mutant.  He was literally twice as big at birth as the other two.  We asked our horse vet if the two runts would live and he answered that they were not runts but the big one was an anomaly.  We called him 'Just Plain Sam'.

So we had Sam and Misty at the farm.  Sam grew to be over 100 pounds and was about 40 pounds heavier that a typical male English Setter.  He had a beautiful coat with flowing feathers on his legs and tail.  He also had amazing dewlaps. 

Misty bossed him around a lot but she also taught him to hunt.  Many times I watched while Misty took same out to the middle of hay field before it was cut.  Had him lie down in the middle.  Then she would start around the perimeter, making the diameter of her circle smaller and smaller.  Eventually she would scare up a rabbit.  She would run the rabbit right at Sam who was hidden in the hay.  When the rabbit arrived,  up sprang Sam and they had lunch.  No noise, no barking almost like James Bond with precision.

Sam was never the favorite of my Mother.  My parents came out to the farm one Summer Sunday to have dinner and enjoy the pool and farm and animals and grandkids...Mom cooked a prime rib roast of beef.  She left it on the kitchen counter while she checked on something in another room.  No one had told her about Sam and counters.  You see Sam was so big that he was eye level above the counter top.  When he saw something he liked, he just took it.  Which he did.  We had hamburgers for dinner.  My Mother never forgave Sam.  I don't think he cared. 

I am not certain if Sam was dumb or just did not give a damn.  We lived on a stone dust county maintained road, about 5 farms and 3 houses on a 2 mile road.  The local town kids liked to use it for a short cut because it was straight and seldom had traffic.  Sam liked to sleep on the same road, in the middle of it.  It was his road.  The local cars and trucks knew Sam and drove around him or got out and yelled at him to move.  The teenage kids did not know it was Sam's road.  They came down the stone dust road at about 80 miles an hour and Sam did not even lift his head up.  He just ignored them like he did everyone else.  The kids saw Sam, hit the horn and finally gave up and steered for the ditch.  I came back from the barn because of all the noise and went out to the road to see what happened.  Sam was asleep on the road.  The kids and their Camaro were in the ditch.  They started to yell at me and I just looked at them.  I asked them if they were all right and they said yeah.  Then they asked me to help them out of the ditch with my tractor.  I did not see much point in that and suggested that they drive a little slower.  Everyone knew that was Sam's road.

We decided to get a bitch from another line of English Setters so that we could breed Sam.  We bought a blue English Setter we named Calamity Jane.  She was a hunter like Misty and the rabbit population dwindled to zero.  But Jane's claim to fame was something else.  Often Setter owners will brag on the 'soft mouth' of an English Setter.  We had a pond in the middle of our racetrack and ducks and geese made it their home.  Jane often went swimming and generally raised Cain with the birds.  One day my wife was doing something in the front yard so that Jane could see DJ from the pond.  The next thing we knew there was a loud commotion at the pond and Jane was trotting back to the front yard.  In her mouth was a Mallard duck.  When she got to DJ she wagged her tail and dropped it at DJ's feet.  The duck righted itself, quacked loudly, and flew back to the pond.  Jane turned and ran back to the pond to play.  My wife never said a word...

People who live their whole lives in the city or suburbia miss out on a large piece of life.  Rural and town life is even more limited if one does not share ones life with a dog, preferably two or more at time. 

 

 

 

That's right in the mid 80's we moved the whole kit and caboodle to Roswell Georgia and suburbia. The setters grew older and they all passed on. Before Jane died she had a litter. Again the litter was only three. Again we quickly sold two beautiful pups. Again we kept one.

This time it was another bitch. Again she was a giant. We called her 'Big Bertha'. We couldn't sell her because she was deaf from birth. Misty was gone by then but she kept Jane and Sam young for several years.

How do you call a deaf dog into the house for dinner? That's another story and another dog and another lens .... Dogs Are Family Too ... Three

Come share your stories and photos about your dogs with me. Here are some of other dog lenses...

Great Pyrenees

Siberian Huskies

Border Collies