My brother wanted a hunting dog, as fate would have it he went to the Wexford county humane animal shelter. They told him they didn't have the type of dog he was looking for but to leave his phone number and they would call him when one came in.
He didn't even have time to make it home when they called and said they had forgotten about one they had at a foster home.
My brother called and got directions to go see the dog.
It was at a preachers home and was glad to see my brother as he said the dog would get the chain tangled up and start a ruckus barking.
She was a white speckled Springer Spaniel with a big black strip down the middle of her back. My brother liked what he saw so he loaded her up in his 1972 (the small one) Bronco took her into town and did the paper work. Once he got her home he let her out of the Bronco, she started smelling around the place so brother went inside to tell every one to come see his dog. We all went out and the dog was missing and wasn?t coming to the calls of here dog.
I jumped on my dirt bike and started riding the fields and pastures then the road I finally found her just down the road a little bit, picked her up and gave her a ride back home. She enjoyed riding on the dirt bike and the snowmobiles a bit latter.
My brother named her skunk. She is the best dog I have ever had the chance to hunt behind. Many would not care for her because she was a hunting dog not a bird dog or a rabbit dog or a squirrel dog.
Deer season came and went. I was going to college so didn?t have much time to hunt at all. My brother every day would load that dog up and go hunting . I have seen her with balls of snow attached to her chest she could hardly walk let alone run. Brother would lay her on a old hunk of carpet in front of the wood burner to get those balls melted off.
Now is the part that my brother having a Bronco comes in. One morning I was off school so brother and I decided we would go do some snow shoe hunting at a 3 year old clear cut project on state land.. That brat dog growled when I went to set in the right front seat of the Bronco, that was her seat and wasn?t going to allow me to set in it. Brother finally got her in the back seat and made her behave.
We got around six of those big old snow shoe rabbits. I could hardly believe it when I saw her retrieving one we had shot. Dogs only retrieve birds right.
Another time after we had went back to work from a lay off we went partridge hunting with my dad one week end. One of us had shot a pat and the dog went and got it. She brought it to me. My dad said, Isn?t that some thing. I feed her twice a day now you guys are at work Robb owns her and has hunted a bunch alone with her and she brings the birds bad to Al.
One year we were living on my uncles farm in the UPPER during a lay off while they went of a vacation and visited their out of state kids. We got skunk one morning and rode the snow mobile to the back of the uncles farm where the cedar swamp was . Nearing the noon hour we decided to work our way back to the snowmobiles and go up to lunch. My brother got a bit behind with skunk as I got to the sleds. I was standing there when my brother shot then yelled he had missed and skunk was bringing it to me. As it crossed the open area I fired and decided I had missed too. Skunk went charging by me before I had time to even think about catching her. I started calling her back then my brother chimed in once he got to me. We had about decided to leave one of our coats there and go for lunch, water the cattle and come back for her when we saw her coming thru the cedars. Some thing looked wrong at first but soon we saw she had a snow shoe rabbit . Latter that day when we cleaned them we found one BB in that rabbit.
Skunk got really old and lived the rest of her life at ease on a old rug in the family room next to the fire in the winter. She would still get real excited when we brought out a gun or one of our hunting coats. Then one morning she wasn't hunting with us any longer she is waiting for us to join her a the hunting grounds some day.
Al
