If they could only talk

With due credit to Rudyard Kipling and his poem about the bittersweet part of being a dog's master- I have framed the piece by Ben Hur Lampman circa 1926- "Where To Bury A Dog"- believe it was featured in the first issue of Gun Dog magazine 1988??- Also, Dean- I am always moved and outraged when I read Corey Ford's "Just A Dog" happened in the Freedom NH area the year and month I was born Nov. 1941-- and it is still as inexcusable an act, albiet not intentional, today as it was 68 deer seasons ago- "Stops and beaters oft unseen, lurk behind some leafy screen- calm and steady always be and never shoot where you can't see" and both these articles were written well before the Blaze Orange safety clothing and headgear became the Law of the Land-

Dick Cheney must have been of the Sherwood Coggins school of careless gun handling- and the real keynote to such a tragic demise of Man's best friend- was that Mr. Coggins actual been shooting at a deer, he just might as well have missed- but a fine bird dog, or for that matter, a street Heinz 57 mutt- still the same- and when a gun goes off like that, it never misses the target--

It is a credit to Corey Ford that he kept on with his fine dogs, shotguns and coverts, and kept his writing skills honed- hard to decide between his "Lower Forty" and Robert Ruark's "The Old Man and The Boy" back the the 1950's with Field and Stream--A Rolls Royce or a Bentley--here's hoping the birds hold for you and that your "Tinkhamtown" never becomes besoiled by bikers or the quad running six-pack outlaws--

[Bill Murphy]

Larry, odd that you would post a story and picture about "the last point". Several years ago, Linda and I were visiting her brother in Georgia, walked with her last Springer, 14 year old Doser, the long path for the newspaper one morning. On a whim, she carried the camera. The road that runs past the driveway is a dam confining a large pond that is the border of her brother's property. The pond is home to a flock of rather tame mallards and some odd ducks. Doser spotted one of the ducks at the shoreline, didn't wait for the command to fetch, and went in after the duck. At 14, he swam across the entire pond, the duck switched directions and came back to where he started. My first thought was to start digging Doser's grave, but he was no worse for wear. That was his last live retrieve. Yes, we got suitable photographs of the event.