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28 • S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S paced and controllable old Brittany. That was at 5 p.m. on a Florida evening in spring. At 3 a.m. the next morning I was awakened by Danny's bell. I had been sleeping in the station wagon and he was coming down a moonlit trail, accompanied by Tex. Tex eyed me with apprehension, but Danny treated the event as a routine workout. That ended Danny's Florida exercise, as we were soon heading out west. I figured a few thousand acres of sagebrush would fit Danny's lifestyle because he'd soon have to realize we were all in this bird-hunting business together. When I first turned him loose in the sage, I observed with pride how he quartered ahead of me, and I was not really apprehensive until I saw him through my binoculars, topping out a mile away on a grassy ridge. Half an hour later he was coming straight back toward me. I was sure he'd had his little wind-sprint and was ready to settle down, but while I blasted on the whistle and screamed promises of raw steak and a new doghouse, he passed me full bore at a distance of 20 yards without turning his head and did a couple of miles in the opposite direction. This recurred on several occasions. At the end of approximately three hours he would come to the truck—not to me, the truck. I couldn't catch him 20 feet from it, but when we both got in we were buddies again. The rendezvous had to be in the truck. It was the second time out that we got into the coyote bit. As Danny dipped over the third ridge, I heard the yaps of a coyote, and then another, and I wondered what was going on. "Watch it!" a local rancher said. "Coyotes sometimes kill our young stock dogs." The next time out I had an athletic young friend with me, and when the coyote chorus started, he ran off in that direction. Not to worry, he reported. The coyotes chased Danny but Danny paid no attention to them, and after a quarter-mile the tired animals just sat down and barked at him. I tried a change of territory and released Danny in the foothills, headed uphill, figuring gravity might bring him back. An hour later I climbed a knob and with binoculars sighted him in a canyon. He was playing tag with a black bear, but he came in shortly after that. I t was about that time we began to discuss the electric collar. Bird season was coming and Danny and I had no agreement yet. I'd heard about electric collars for a long time, and the last word was that Murphy's attention had finally been gained with one. I understand that part of our energy shortage is due to the juice needed to light him up. Some of my information on electric collars was pretty old, but I knew they had been improved. Trainers called them everything from the hand of God to instruments of torture. But very brief shocks might be the answer for Danny. Or would Danny just speed up? One of my informants told me he had used an electric collar to break his pointer of chasing rabbits. When the pointer would refuse to stop a chase, he would get a little jolt of electricity. "I broke him of chasing rabbits," the man said, "but it is kind of embarrassing. Now whenever my dog sees a rabbit he rolls over on his back and howls." It was along here that Charley came into the picture. Charley is a pint-sized Brittany owned by Jack Ward, and we may as well face it—Charley is a cow chaser. Charley was named after me, and at T hey ran Danny with a 20-foot checkcord streaming behind him, which should have been an omen. He was a 6-month-old setter, almost entirely white, and let's face it: Danny was a field-trial castoff, his parents being seasoned campaigners with impeccable credentials. Now I know about field-trial dogs and would never expect to follow one on my ancient legs when they are bred to be handled by people on good horses. But Danny was the age of pup I wanted, and the breeder figured he wouldn't be a big goer. He also didn't hold his tail quite high enough for the field-trial business. I found later that Danny held his tail low for more effective streamlining, using it as a sort of spoiler. Danny is not the first speedster I have owned. For a couple of years I tried to keep track of a lantern-jawed pointer named Murphy. You may have seen him passing your place at one time or another, for I have no idea where he hunted when I couldn't see him. Murphy was very tiring. He had a propensity for becoming lost, only to stand around and yap for me—not that I could catch him when I found him. He just wanted to keep things organized and would, upon seeing me, take off again. He was occasionally a picturesque pointer, but seldom was I able to reach him before the birds went off to feed, and generally I could not even determine which species Murphy had found. I gave Murphy away, after which he won a national prairie chicken championship in Alberta—where most of the birds are sharptail grouse. Since I had once watched Murphy run up 320 acres of sage grouse without stopping, I read with interest the account of his championship in American Field. It seems the judges had been a little puzzled when, on one occasion, Murphy disappeared over a distant ridge, whereupon quite a number of birds took off from somewhere out there. The American Field reporter said there was no way of proving that Murphy had flushed the birds, so only Murphy and I know what really happened, and at this late date I see no reason for being a snitch. Back to Danny. A s soon as I got Danny home and took him out of the crate, I threw a dummy for him and he retrieved it with the solemnity of a real pro, thus cementing our friendship. It was a nice gesture on his part, although he hasn't done it since. My wife and I took Danny out to run on a broad field, and remembering the procedure at his home kennel, I left a 20-foot checkcord attached to his collar. When I turned him loose, he left. I was not with Debie when she caught him, as she beat me to the car. She didn't have much trouble, she said, and collared him on the highway between DeLand and New Smyrna Beach, Florida, with the aid of some truck drivers who helped to corner him against a fence. She said the station wagon would run faster than Danny but he could turn quicker. Things worked fine on our second workout because Danny accidentally ran through some rodeo grounds and got confused among the chutes. All I did was vault scratchily over a board fence topped with barbed wire and I had him cornered. Each time I'd catch him, he would greet me with enthusiasm and try to sit on my lap on the way home. Then I found a beautiful place for him to run—a weedy strip bounded by a fence on one side and a deep canal on the other. As a steadying influence, I put him down with Tex, my conventionally