I was raised around pointers and followed them afield with my Dad and his hunting partners through the rolling hills and plains of Texas. We had a plethora of bobwhite quail back then and I developed a great love for Mister Bob. As time passed, I married and pursued a career in the U.S. Army.
In 1975, I was stationed at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, and my wife agreed we needed a dog as a companion for our toddler son. She wanted a house dog and I wanted a birddog, and we finally agreed on a Brittany.
Therefore, just before Christmas, my 18-month-old son met ten-week-old Ginger for the first time. I have a picture of them nose to nose, checking out one another. That picture, as well as many others of them growing up together, are permanently engraved in my mind. I am blind now, the result of an airplane crash, but I have the memory of that picture, which chokes me up, especially during the Christmas season.
None of my previous birddogs had a pedigree, but Ginger did. Her dam was a field trial champ from Mississippi, quite unusual for a Brittany, so our pup became “Mississippi’s Little Ginger” on her registration papers.
I had trained hard-headed pointers in the past, but Ginger was not the same. Eager to please, quite intelligent, but a bit timid. I had to be careful not to be too forceful with her. I had a book, Training American Gun Dogs, not much more than a pamphlet, but that book, along with a few planted quail, served us well through Ginger’s training. I watched her as a pup pointing grasshoppers and tracking birds on the wing as they flew over our backyard. Then, during her initial training, locking into a quivering point on a quail wing that I twitched on a line I cast with a rod and reel. I was confident that she was a winner.
The next Fall, when the North Carolina bobwhite season opened, she was ready. I took her on her first hunt with a couple of friends who had a Weimaraner and a German shorthair pointer. The pointer found the first covey and Ginger backed him, just like it was in her blood.
When the covey flushed, we downed three on the rise. Ginger brought two of the birds back to me before either of the other dogs found one. I knew then I possessed a superb little gundog.
Ginger proved me correct for almost ten years. During her career, she hunted in North and South Carolina, Texas, Arizona and Tennessee. She hunted mostly quail, both bobwhite and Mearns, as well as woodcock, which she found much more easily than I could hit them. However, I have no doubt she would have excelled on any gamebird.
Speaking of woodcock, Ginger would go almost anywhere to locate those birds. On cold mornings in the swamps and sloughs where the timberdoodles fed, she ran through the muddy water, sometimes breaking the ice to root out the elusive birds. The little Brittany never faltered, nor did she feel the cold, no matter how long the day. At the end of the hunt, she would be sopping wet and muddy, sometimes with ice clinging to her coat.
Because she lived in the house, when we arrived home Ginger had to have a bath. It was hilarious to see her shiver in the warm, soapy water as if she were busting through icy swamps! We had a calico cat at the time, and many times she had a bath with Ginger. It was just as hilarious to see both of them, almost the same color, in the bathtub together.
Ginger initially hunted in close in the pine barrens of the Eastern United States but learned to range far and wide on the plains and mesquite flats of Texas, outperforming many of the pointers and setters of my hunting partners. She was the best retrieving dog I ever hunted behind. Seldom did she miss a fallen bird, sometimes coming to a point on a prickly pear cactus patch where a wounded quail had scurried under to hide.
Hunting in Arizona, Ginger learned several valuable, although painful lessons. One beautiful mountain morning, just as the first rays of the rising sun illuminated the cholla and manzanita, we zig-zagged up a brush-choked ravine in search of Mearns quail. As I followed her up a wash through some good cover, I heard her yelp and thought a rattlesnake had bitten her. She came running out of the brush toward me with what I first thought were cactus spines covering her chest and face. I immediately carried her to my pickup, then to the vet to remove all those porcupine quills. That porcupine taught her that they were one animal not to nose around.
We made another emergency trip to the vet when she mouthed a Colorado River toad. She learned not to lick them as the slime covering their body contains a nerve agent that can kill dogs. Fortunately, I was home, knew the symptoms of the poisoning and got her to the vet in time to save her life, though the event weakened her heart.
Throughout my hunting career, I wiped oil on my firearms about every six months or so. One July day in Arizona, Ginger saw me get out a shotgun to wipe it down. She knew that usually meant a hunting trip. I completed my task and began to look for Ginger, but she was nowhere to be found. I finally went out to where my Ramcharger was parked and she was in the front seat, panting and suffering from the 100-degree heat. After seeing my gun, she had immediately ran out of the house and leaped through an open window into the truck. I literally had to make her come back into the house for a drink of cool water and a nap. She was not about to miss a hunting trip!
That white- and ginger-colored lady was my hunting companion for ten years, through and over all kinds of terrain where she never failed me. No hill was too high, no swamp too icy, nor any day too hard. Physically, her heart was weakened by both the encounter with the Colorado River toad and heart worms she contracted in Texas when someone stole her from my dog pen. I recovered her when the thief took her to a veterinarian, who recognized Ginger and contacted me through a phone number on her rabies tag. We treated her for the heart worms and she recovered, but I had to limit her daily hunting time because of the infection.
Ginger passed just before a Christmas in Tennessee, when a deep layer of snow covered the ground. Despite the snow, I took her and buried her in a perfect place – a flat on a little creek bend where I thought she would be happy. There were lots of tears that Christmas as my family certainly missed our perfect little companion. Sometimes there are still tears as I reminisce about Ginger and our adventures in the field.