It was my very first hunt with Lacie, and I said to the plantation manager, “Could you please put out twelve quail, two chukars and two pheasants, and all as singles in a small field.”
He replied, “We have a small training field that is planted with sorghum. But you know the weather is horrible, with all this freezing rain and sleet. And besides, you can’t hunt with that little dog!. She ain’t big enough.”
Back then, Lacie was only eight months old and 15 pounds and her skin was red with puppy mange. We had just brought her home a couple months earlier. But I had already seen her hunting desire and abilities in our back yard, and I knew from one squirrel hunt that she was not gun-shy. If she got to chasing a tree-rat that was closer to her than to a tree, she would get it. No gun needed! The only training I did was to take an old sock filled with other old socks, squirt it with quail scent and place it under the pine-needle mulch in our front yard. She found it at once.
The weather that day certainly did not phase her. It took her about 20 minutes to discover her first bird in that field. It was a chukar, which she flushed and I shot. We got all but one of the birds that winter day.
Now a bit about Lacie’s background. She was a street rescue dog that we adopted for $50 just to be companion to our Chihuahua/Papillion mix. I never gave any thought to taking her on a bird hunt. She’s a mutt, not a pointer, a setter or a Boykin. Later on, we had her DNA done and found she was a unique blend of Papillion, Malamute, Shiatzu and the last quarte, a mix of hounds and spaniels. But I guess it’s the right mix!
On her second hunt, I took along my adult son, Jake. On the way to the plantation, I was bragging about how well Lacie had done on her first hunt. We went to our assigned field and walked the rows of sorghum and did not find a single bird. I was beginning to doubt those first results. Maybe that first field was so small that any dog could have figured out what was going on.
Anyhow, Lacie went up to a line of cedar trees that separated our field from the adjacent one and flushed a quail, which Jake shot. She then bounded into that next field and put up a covey of four quail. I had asked for the birds to be put out in pairs, so I called the plantation office to apologize for going into the wrong field. Well, as it turned out, this was actually the correct field and despite my request, the birds had been put out in coveys of four.
As happens, a couple of birds got away from us and sailed into the nearby cedars. We walked into the woods and there, Lacie found one bird after another. At one point, she stuck her nose into a hole on a creek bank. I was cussing her out and telling her to get out of there. I had visions of a rodent or snake biting her! When she finally pulled her nose out of the hole, out flew a bobwhite, which Jake expertly shot. At that point, I vowed to defer to her canine super-powers and never doubt her again.
Ten seasons have gone by and Lacie has hunted more than 4,000 birds, mostly quail, but also a few hundred pheasants and chukars. Some days we get more birds than they put out as Lacie will find left-over birds that the plantation’s guides and dogs could not find. She still chases squirrels in the yard. But she is not as fast as she was when she was young and hasn’t caught one in quite some time.
In the beginning, she would find the dead birds, but rarely do a full retrieve. Through the years, however, she has become a better retriever, seemingly sensing when shot birds fall into thick brush or briars that might be difficult for us to penetrate. A few years ago, she did a water retrieve when a quail dropped down on the other side of a small pond. She had never been swimming before. But that did not stop her. Maybe it’s the daddy/doggie showers she takes with me after every hunt. After all, she sleeps on our bed every night.
Lacie has a unique hybrid hunting style. If the birds are in tight cover, she points and then puts them up on command. If the birds are out in the open, she runs them up. And fortunately, even though she is rather short legged weighs only 24 pounds, she can outrun any pheasant. If a bird hit hard, I tell her to ‘hunt dead’ and she will at the very least find the downed bird. I don’t try to make her hunt exactly like a pointer or like a spaniel. I let her hunt in her own Lacie-dog style.
Over the years, my beloved little pooch has earned a number of accolades from other hunters. One day, a game warden who had witnessed Lacie’s abilities many times told some other folks: “Look in that man’s truck. You’ll never believe it looking at her, but that is one of the finest bird dogs in the upstate.”
Lacie is ten years old now, and I’m not sure how many more seasons she has in her. But I have a feeling that as long as she can walk, she will want to hunt. I hope she lives a long and healthy life.