Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/641958
I t's all but unheard of for a dog that's about to compete in a National Championship field trial to go wild bird hunting on the eve of the event. There's too much at stake, too much that can go wrong, too much risk that weeks, months, even years of preparation and training can come undone in a few chaotic moments. The watchwords for any handler who's grooming his dogs for a major trial are "structure" and "control"—and hunting wild birds, by definition, can't be structured or controlled. It's messy, unpredictable. Anything can happen—and usually does. The point being that most dogs, in the days leading up to an important field trial, are kept on a tight leash figuratively and literally. Their every move is scripted; having been honed and polished to a razor's edge, their handlers' overriding concern is keeping them there. You'd think this would weigh even more urgently on an amateur with titular aspirations, especially one who'd only been trialing for a comparatively short time and was making his first appearance at the National Championship. But Jordan Horak isn't your typical amateur—which helps explain why, less than 48 hours before leaving for the 2015 National Cocker Championship in Michigan, he joined Mike Rutz, Ken Blomberg, and me for a late-October woodcock hunt on Mike's aptly named "Timberdoodle Ranch" in central Wisconsin. Ken was the common denominator who set up the hunt (Mike, Jordan, and I hadn't met before), and in an email he'd told me I was in for a treat. "Jordan's a dog whisperer," he gushed. property, a 40-acre tract of brushy mixed- age popple that he manages intensively for woodcock (hence the name), was sure to be loaded with flight birds by the time we convened for our hunt. "With Jordan's dogs and Mike's birds," he concluded, "it ought to be a heck of a show." K en wasn't lying—or even exaggerating. On a sun- splashed Indian Summer afternoon that throbbed with the brassy clangor of migrating sandhill cranes, Jordan Horak's Breeze—a.k.a., Juggernaut Cool Breeze—reminded us, thrillingly, why the cocker spaniel is called the cocker spaniel. (Hewing to the conventional field trial wisdom—and perhaps hedging his bet just a little— Jordan kept Rocky in the truck, feeling that he had him right where he wanted him for the upcoming National.) A lot of dogs, confronted with the bristling cover that characterizes the Timberdoodle Ranch, would give their owners a look that says Are you kidding me? Indeed, the thought of hunting a pointing dog in parts of it—or, more precisely, the thought of having to squeeze in front of a dog on point to flush a tight-holding woodcock—is almost too frighteningly painful to contemplate. Breeze didn't merely negotiate those gnarly tangles; she attacked them. Shredded them. Blistered them. Blew them apart. Just as Ken had predicted, the flight birds were in, and every few minutes the rumbling sonic commotion that announces a flush would be followed by the cry of Bird!, the trill of whistling wings, and the crack of one or more smoothbores. It was about as delightful a hunt as I can remember—and as relaxed. While Field-trialer Jordan Horak could not see any reason why he shouldn't own and train two once-in-a-lifetime dogs. S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 1 4 1 isconsin trainer Jordan Horak and Breeze, a third-place finisher in the 2015 National Cocker Championship. W Tom Davis u n d o g s G "He's a young guy, pretty much self-taught as a trainer, and his dogs are fabulous. He only started field-trialing last fall, but his older cocker, Rocky, is already a Field Champion, and his younger one, Breeze, lacks just a point or two from her FC title. "They're incredible hunting dogs, too— like high-speed perpetual motion machines—and the rapport Jordan has with them is unbelievable. It's as if they can read each other's minds." Ken went on to say that Mike's