Another story from my father, Tom Clarke.

[James Clarke]

The Last Dragon



I lifted what was left of Sam onto the stainless-steel examination table. “Juice him up Doc, I need some time “. “ I want the Jesus shot, ” my vet kind of laughed at me and said, “and that is “? You know exactly what it is. I need an IV with enough amino acids, glucose, electrolytes, vitamins and anything else that is necessary for life to be injected into this old dog. We don’t have much time. Dr. Hutto agreed and he mixed the bag of elements and saline. I came back an hour later to see the magic of biochemistry. I lifted his skin, and it went right back into place. His eyes had a little spark and his tail was wagging. I had gone home and browned a pound and half of hamburger, and he ate it all.

​He went around the yard and hiked his leg, and it was time to rest. We had dinner that night and it was a somber affair. Sam would usually greet my mom with a deep bay. He always wanted to talk and was keenly interested in meal preparation. But this evening he chose to lie by the fire. It was mid-December in the Texas Panhandle, the part of Texas that has winter. The week before we had decent snow, maybe eight inches. There was still snow on the ground in the shady spots. The logs crackled and Sam laid close enough to warm one side and then rotated to warm the other. His kennel mate, Myrtle and his daughters Lady and Star shared space.

​I read the road to Tinkhamtown that night and cried as you should. Corey Ford was an elegant writer. I know that dogs dream and hoped Sam dreams of his youth.

It was a pleasant morning, mid- thirties, no wind and a few clouds. I let the dogs out; poor Sam was a bag of bones. I lifted a handful of skin and it slowly retracked into place. However, the tail was wagging, and the eyes were clear. I thought back on how Sam came into my life. He was a gift from my father-in-law, a radiologist in Des Moines, Iowa. An expensive puppy. Kansas bred out of Jack and Rosey Roche’s kennel in the little apple, Manhattan Kansas. His pedigree was a who’s who of English Setters. Champions on the top and on the bottom. Built for running the prairies. White coat, black ticking, a tear drop shaped patch over his right eye, white nose and muzzle and black left eye patch with a chestnut stripe underneath. He was a pretty boy.

​We loaded up in the truck, it was just the two of us, he liked to ride in the back seat. We stopped at McDonalds and Sam had a sausage biscuit as was his custom. The field was only a few minutes from town but time enough to have a cup of coffee. And listen to the Day-by-Day Philosopher, on KPAN. The farm belonged to a friend from childhood; we would try a thirty-acre piece of CRP. It was a rectangular shape with a cut corn field on the north side and a large playa lake to the north of that. The whole farm might have been a half section, but it was a pheasant incubator. We parked on the east end of the field, this was the higher end of the property, so we were walking down hill and had the breeze from the southwest in our face. I did everything I could to stack the odds, but they were still poor. These panhandle roosters know the game, and it was late in the year. The young and careless were gone. However, this was not our first time on this property either. We trained in this field, from the time of puppy hood until now. We sat in the truck for a few minutes; I had my coffee and focused on the field. I thought that setting for a while might calm down any birds on that end of the field. I did not want to start a chain reaction flush and clear the field.



I got out, Sam was excited to go, so much so that when I opened the back door he jumped out and crashed into a pile of snow. He recovered from the wreak with me helping him to his feet. I slipped the Filson bag over my shoulders, checked the whistle, pulled the twenty-eight-gauge side by side from the gun slip and we were ready to go. “alright Sam show me some of that bird dog stuff “

Ten yards into the field Sam locks up. I’m thinking damn this was too easy. Of course, when I walked past him to flush the bird it was a hen. She came up creating a pheasant cascade. I should have just flamed her. But conditioning is a powerful force, and she flapped and glided all the way to the far end of the field, taking a dozen or more birds with her.​

Reevaluating the situation, and honestly a little hopeless, I decided to just press on. It was eight hundred yards to the end of the field, Sam was waning but still game and there was the possibility that some birds had not exited.

He quartered to the front at fifty yards and had nice casts, side to side. Then he hit the scent, I hustled to get into a better position. It was not strong, but enough to change directions. I have seen this hundreds of times. He could discern distance from scent strength amazingly well. Sam knew how to pursue and not push. The gentle art of being a predator. The dance! I am now convinced that this is no hen, but the dragon we were looking for. Were into the field two hundred yards, and the game is on! He is moving well; his breathing is not overly labored. I would say even light on his feet, for a moment he was young, must be smelling that intoxicating musk of the pheasant. He both had a gave a shot of adrenaline.

​If you have ever seen a bird dog work, you know. The bird prefers to stay on the ground. They will run and stop, and not in a straight line away from you. The game is to stalk the bird, with a series of points and then relocations. In a large field with a single hunter and dog the advantage is to the dragon. The bird’s strategy is every time you stop; he scoots as fast as possible to find an escape path or take flight. Of all the setters I have hunted behind none were Sams equal on pheasant. He was average on quail, and we never had the opportunity to hunt grouse and woodcock. But if you put him in the field with pheasant’s he would put on a clinic.
He's down. Back straight, tail at about a sixty-degree angle, feet planted. He held his head high and was breathing in the scent in gulps. I came in from the side so he could see me, as you should. There was a cut in the field not a ditch, but a depression and it had filled half with snow. Sam was frozen, as he is in my mind. The dragon burst from the ground. The snow crystals flying almost like exhaust, wings beating the air, and cackling. I could see the white ring around his neck, the red patch on his cheeks and iridescent feathers of his body. He was perfect. A long-tailed bird and not of the year. The side by side found my shoulder, he fell at the report. It was a clean kill. Sam was never steady to shot, he broke at the flush and was halfway to the bird while I was just taking in the moment. A cloud of feathers still floating in a clear panhandle sky. It fell less than ten yards from the flush; I was quick back then, and lethal with the 28 gauge. I went to him. He tried to pick it up but could not. We just sat there in the snow and bluestem: he licked at the bird maybe a sign of respect. He had given us a fair chase, and respect was due. Sam was physically played out. And I was emotionally the same. We may have sat for ten minutes, the time flew. He was a puppy again, I was a graduate student, we were with the Chief and Myrt, Pede, Star, Lady, Jiggers and his brace mate Dixie. The thousands of birds, the quite times reading a book, studying for finals, the hotels and road trips, sharing a sandwich. A life that was flashing by as it was ending. Come on old buddy let’s go home. He stumbled to rise. So, I put him over my shoulders as a shepherd would a lamb and carried him to the truck. He left it all in that field in Deaf Smith County, as he had so many times before he never held back. If you have ever had the joy of having a dog that is an extension of you and you of the dog. Be thankful, it is a rare and precious gift. So, I invite you to raise a glass to Toms Haywire Samurai, he was a dandy !