You never know when it's the last time
 

I took my 12 year old June Bug for a walk today and she found a couple birds. She never got more than 30 or 40 feet from me today. It wasn't that long ago that I had to damn near run to stay in effective shooting range of her but boy we put a lot of birds in the bag together. She always had a crazy long nose.

June Bug has had a good life so far. I can see it in her face. Good on you, Dan.

Our Dogs complete the experience.

I had both of my labs, Parker and Fox, out to SD in 2023 and I knew it was their last trip. They loved it to the very end.

I kept a few feathers from the last bird I bagged this season with my old girl. Never know!

Here's the caption on that photo of June Bug and the two roosters:

"Ya, I was only staying slow and close so you could keep up with me."

(:

And when we had labs my wife and I would call that "Labatitude"...so love that breed.

Yes, my almost 12 yr old Claro has very reluctantly retired. She had a complete ACL tear about 5 years ago, 2 surgeries for what's called a TPLO and she is now so arthritic in that leg she limps all the time. She doesn't have QUIT in her vocabulary but I won't hunt her and then she suffers the consequences.
However il lucky her younger sister and niece, Parker and Sage can still hunt em up!