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If you haven’t visited the main page in a while we’ve added a number of new updates this week:
- New article on dental care and scenting: CLICK HERE
- Updated Ask The Vet: CLICK HERE
- Updated Photo Gallery: CLICK HERE for a variety of Glacier Wildlife
Some of you will recall my season started out with me in an orthopedic boot due to a running injury. After three weeks in said boot, which included me walking off balance, I managed to flare-up the nerves in my back. I got done at the office on Saturday (the South Dakota pheasant opener) and spent the rest of the day laying on my back cussing my stupidity for ignoring the pain in my foot. A season that had started out bad was quickly sinking even further as I watched college football instead of two setters cornering roosters in a South Dakota field.
Thankfully Sunday I awoke to less pain. Chrissy had a week-long business trip on the calendar, so we decided to spend the day chasing dogs and enjoying what was left of the unseasonably nice weekend. It was the first time Chrissy had been in the field with little Miss Lily:
We had already had the other dogs out in the field and the little dog didn’t take long to tire in the increasing heat of the day. She is still a little devil, but with that being said, her training is progressing unbelievably well. I’m still taking the no pressure approach and I’m continually amazed at this little dog’s intelligence. Belle impressed me with her natural abilities, it will be a while before I see those in Lily; however, this dog’s intelligence is truly amazing. As has always been the case with me and dog training I’ve had to learn to slow it down and keep it fun.
After her first big romp in the field, I was behind the camera and didn’t even contemplate bringing a gun; we took a break as the temperatures continued to rise. Having spent some time behind each dog and having managed to scratch down a bird or two we called it a day so Chrissy could get home to pack.
Monday found me laying on my back again, only this time it wasn’t out of pain but rather in the uncomfortable tube known as an MRI machine. I had been praying my issues would be non-surgical and after the radiologist…in Boston amazingly…had a chance to take a look, I’d know my fate. Not expecting a call for 2-3 days I was surprised when my phone rang late this afternoon. The news was good and bad, I wouldn’t need surgery; however, I did have a stress fracture of the navicular bone in my left foot which would mean three more weeks in the boot and three more weeks of not running. Thankfully the doc ok’d hunting…though I’m not sure he would have had he really known how many miles we put in each day chasing prairie birds. I’m hoping this means I can finally get my season underway nearly two months late.
My hopes were that this year we would be able to hunt well in to December, since the last two years have found us snowed in shortly after Thanksgiving. Ironically as I type this the forecast is calling for the first snow of the season in parts of the state…what was that I had said about Spoo Luck?
We’ve posted a new Ask the Vet at the Ask the Vet Homepage. One of the most difficult decisions we make as pet owners is deciding “when it’s time”…Click Here for More.
For those of you who have been following the site for some time, you are all too familiar with the story of Emma. This past week was the one-year anniversary of our first wheelchair bird, a sharptail:
As luck would have it the anniversary of the above picture coincided with my first hunting trip of the year with my Dad. The forecast was for less than favorable conditions, but we headed out nonetheless.
We decided to start the trip on Emma’s Ridge, which is the spot in the above picture. It had been named after her long before we had success there out of the wheelchair, becaues it was a spot where the brown dog would shine. Many times prairie bird hunting is a big running dog’s game; however, at certain spots a flusher can really be the ticket, and such was the case with Emma on this ridge.
With Lily, the only flusher on the team, holding down the fort at home, we turned to Maggie as we started the day. We had passed through numerous birdy spots, and I was beginning to fear the ridge wasn’t going to produce its magic on this trip. About the time I was certain we were going to go birdless, Maggie slammed into a point at the crest of a ridge. I managed to salute the chicken with two barrels, allowing Dad to take his first bird of the year.
Out in a large flat Maggie once again showed signs of being just a little off. I called her in, watered her and took a short break to allow her to catch her breath. I was hoping that this season wasn’t an indication that Maggie was showing her age, but now I wasn’t so sure. After a brief rest I released her and not fifty yards from where we stopped she again went on point. Dad walked in and quickly had his second bird, a sharptail, in the bag. As we neared the truck Dad walked up another sharptail, which Maggie made a very nice retrieve on to give Dad his limit in under an hour in the field. It was fitting that these two managed a limit at such a memorable location on such a memorable day:
I, on the other hand, would not be so lucky. In the next field my young prodigy was quickly showing me what a two-year old doggie delinquent was like. So many people talk about the terrible twos with bird dogs. Since this was actually Belle’s third season I was hoping I had avoided that curse…I was wrong.
She did start out with a nice point on a prairie chicken but the rest of the field was downhill, as she bumped several groups. I initially gave her the benefit of the doubt, since the day was dead calm and the temps, while not hot, were also not cool. On our final swing she went into a nice point and proceeded to creep, then takout, the two sharpies in front of her, and I had seen enough. We convened an executive meeting in the field with me doing a lot of the talking and the little, formerly perfect, setter doing the listening. The dog I thought would never need any pressure, just molding, was quickly losing my vote of confidence.
We ended the day with both dogs on the ground. Maggie had continued to hunt conservatively most of the day, but this last field proved to be too much. She started with shorter and shorter casts before eventually just tucking in behind me and walking back to the truck. I was frustrated with the fact that I could not pin-point the cause of her change and felt sorry for her, as she obviously was not her old self. That evening she refused her supper and I was fearful it was going to be a one-dog year.
Up to this point I had been reluctant to use an anti-inflammatory, because I could not isolate the area or source of her pain. During the previous week I had started her back on a glucosamine/chondroitin supplement, and when we got back to the motel I popped her with some Rimadyl.
The next morning we awoke to a tremendous change in weather. It was in the low-40s, raining, and with wind gusts over 30 mph. Not exactly ideal hunting conditions, but since we were already committed we headed out in the field. There isn’t much to report from a bird aspect, because we just didn’t see them. About the only thing we accomplished was to get very wet and very cold. We tried short cover and tall cover, medium cover and tree covers and just did not find birds. The bright spot of the day was that Maggie was a new dog. I could not have dreamed that she would have this quick a turn around. After two doses of Rimadyl she was back to her old self. She hunted hard up until the end of the day, in crappy conditions, and readily ate and was looking for more. My misfit was back, hopefully to stay.
I’ll take a bit of a detour here to discuss Rimadyl, as I have received two questions this week in regards to its use. I’ll preface this by saying I have no connection to Pfizer. If one searches on the Internet, you’ll find plenty of people out there with an anti-Rimadyl sentiment and the suggestion that some of the other available anti-inflammatories are “safer.” I just don’t buy it. Rimadyl was the first on the market and very, very widely used. Based on sheer numbers of patients using the drug, you are going to have a few reactions. The key to me is looking at the percentage of patients that experience a reaction. I have not seen any hard figures, but I would wager Rimadyl is among the lowest, if not the lowest. All of the NSAIDs have potential adverse effects, and it is speculated that a dog that has issues with one of them potentially could have had the same reaction to the others.
In my own clinic practice, Rimadyl is the first anti-inflammatory to which I turn. That being said, we have four different NSAIDs in our clinic, and certainly I use the others in specific situations or in dogs that don’t seem to benefit from Rimadyl. At the end of the day the NSAID I turn to first in my own dogs is Rimadyl, for what it’s worth. Over the years I have had a very small number of dogs that we speculated reacted to Rimadyl. After quitting the drug and treating the reactions all of those dogs recovered uneventfully.
One last note on the hunting front. I promised more pictures this year and I even have a fancy new setup for carrying my DSLR camera while hunting. Unfortunately the miserable weather on this last trip did not allow me to use the new setup, which means we’ll have to wait until next time.
After my nearly disastrous start to the season, my week continued to be one of good news/bad news. Maggie continued to improve, lending more credence to the fact she very likely had just tweaked something. However, on Wednesday things took another turn when Belle started the day squinting and in obvious pain. A closer exam revealed a small sliver in the surface of her left eye, or more scientifically a corneal foreign body. I have seen this condition multiple times in my career, but only in one other dog…and as you may have already surmised that one dog is Maggie. I practice in the middle of hunting paradise with hundreds of hunting dogs in our practice and some how I’ve managed to own two ocular misfits.
Years ago when Maggie experienced her first such injury I was on high-alert. We immediately anesthetized her and very carefully used small gauge needles to extract the offending stick. After experiencing the issue, literally, every year of her life it has almost become a fall routine and I have removed two of them without the aid of an extra set of hands. This, though, was my Baby Belle and I was sick much of Wednesday. Wednesday night I spent a good hour with head loops and multiple lights trying to fish out the minute little grass piece. I got out what I could and hoped the rest would work its way out.
Hoping to relieve a little stress of the previous week I decided to chase grouse on my day off. Chrissy had business meetings in Dallas, which meant the little cocker would have to travel with the big dogs on her first real hunting trip. After a sleepless night I was dragging in the morning and left town about an hour and a half later than I had planned. I really began to think this hunting season was cursed from the start. During the two-hour car ride I did have a long talk with a veterinary ophthomalogist about my dogs’ eyes and what to do to remedy the situation. She was very helpful and I’ll keep you posted as to whether her suggestions work. I’ll be the guinea pig before recommending them though.
With the temperatures still cool and the grass wet, I decided to give Maggie a spin and evaluate her progress compared to last weekend. Now, if she were a client’s dog I would have probably recommended a week of rest and potentially two. That being said I’m more of a do-as-I-say not as-I-do type of guy…I mean I am the one confined to big bulky boot because I wasn’t smart enough to quit running when it hurt.
Almost immediately I knew I had a different dog on the ground compared to the previous outing. She was much snappier in her ground pattern and in typical Maggie fashion running harder than she should have. A mile into the field she went into a solid point near a fence line, she relocated once and had the bird pinned. I walked in, flushed the grouse and needed both barrels to bring him down. Maggie made the retrieve and the ice for the 2008 season had been broken. We circled back to the truck to give Belle a go.
Belle captured my heart very early in her life, and I have too much of a soft spot for her. Her first two seasons exceeded my expectations and she was clearly a phenom. My having her up on a pedestal had some issues that came with it, as I’ve been reluctant to put too much pressure on her in training out of fear of screwing her up. Unfortunately she has used this to her advantage and has started creeping on birds when I get close. We’ll be going back to the drawing board this season as I try to head off this problem in a dog I had always held in awe.
That lengthy intro leads us to her first bird contact. She made a beautiful point and creeped in prior to establishing a staunch set-up…something I’d rather she not do. As I angled in front she decided to take the bird out and give chase. I didn’t shoot in order to not reward the behavior and was more than a little disappointed in my little “all-star.” The next bird was handled better, though still not up to expectations, but having missed two perfectly pointed birds last weekend I gave her the benefit of the doubt on this one and shot. It ended up being an extremely long retrieve, which she made perfectly. After spending three days in perfect cover and not getting a bird, I had the dogs on the ground for less than two hours and could have easily taken my limit. My doom and gloom season had quickly turned around.
With my late start, the day was heating up and not wanting to push it further, I called it a day for the setters and turned to Lily for her first in-the-field adventure. After making training mistakes in all three of my previous dogs on the path to a steady dog, I have visions of doing it right with Lily. This means no birds will be introduced or shot over her until she is steady. Nonetheless it gave me the opportunity to take her for a run and follow along with the camera.
Is this dog too pretty to be a hunting dog?
Don’t let that pretty exterior full you, this little dog is a hard-charger:
So hard in fact that with those big puppy ears she can take flight:
It was great being out in the field with all of the girls for the first time, and I am extremely excited about having a smart little flushing dog to work with. The girls posed for one last picture and everyone jumped in the cab for the ride back home:
I have posted more photos from the Glacier Adventure. This posting shows some of the breathtaking views we experienced on the trip. CLICK HERE
After having a number of road blocks thrown at us early on, I finally was able to get out on my first hunt of the year. I had been overly excited with the reports that were rolling in about spectacular cover conditions and better than average bird numbers. Having been successful in down years, I thought it was just a matter of showing up to collect a limit of birds. Oh how the grouse gods had another plan in place.
Saturday morning dawned crisp and cool with a heavy dew in the grass. I decided to start the day running Maggie, as she is the less heat tolerant of the two dogs, and my friend Brad had never hunted over her (ironically she had always been injured when we’ve hunted together previously). She started out in her normal manner but quickly slowed to a much more conservative pace than I was used to from Maggie. My hope was that after seven years she had finally learned to pace herself during the early season, instead of waiting until a month into the hunting year before collecting her wits. By the end of the field it was obvious something was up with Maggie, but it was hard to pinpoint. We ended the swing with no birds, but each dog did get a couple of pheasant points:
Next up was Belle. She was in typical early season form, pointing meadowlarks and being overly cautious with her early season false points. The grouse were definitely uncooperative, as not a single bird would let the dogs get close enough to consider pointing. I managed to walk up a straggler and promptly missed a very easy going away shot. At this point we had seen a number of birds, all four dogs had worked pheasants very well, and while we were birdless, I was feeling good about the start of the season.
We headed to another location, and Maggie was up again. She started out much snappier than she had ended the previous field, and I was hoping that maybe she had worked out whatever was ailing her. A half-mile from the truck she came in for some water, was released, and immediately circled back for more…after releasing her again she wouldn’t move and was very stilted and reluctant to even take a step. I unloaded the gun, hooked it in the back of my vest and carried her out of the field. Back at the truck, after a very thorough exam, I could find nothing to explain her behavior other than a slightly elevated temperature that slowly returned to normal. Here I was, one day into the hunting season and already down a dog.
By the time Brad made it back to the truck it had warmed beyond a safe hunting temp, so we headed back to town to catch some college football games. I monitored Maggie to see if I could get to the bottom of the situation. That evening we hit one more field after the afternoon heat had dissipated. Belle and Gus performed admirably, but my shooting, on the other hand, was embarrassing. Belle had two very nice points on birds only to have me whiff on both. Brad offered his helpful encouragement with, “Way too reward the dog, Joe!”
That night I began to suspect Maggie’s issues were related to her back, as she was walking with a very cobbled gait and had difficulty rising. I could elicit no pain from her, and decided she was on the bench for a while until I could perform more diagnostics. Not ready to call it quits I decided to hunt Belle on her own on my way home the next day. While Belle had performed solo duty in the past, it never was in this big open country. After several grouseless (we did encounter pheasants) hours the little dog uttered no mas:
So we pointed the truck towards home with two setters sharing the front seat in the comfort of the air-conditioned cab, instead of the crates under the topper. I had taken a few days off work for the trip, and now I was going to be heading back in early to spend the better part of the day performing diagnostics on the Maggie dog.
Initially all of the big picture items were looking good. On chest x-rays her lungs were clear and the radiologist noted her large, athletic heart:
On closer exam, she does have evidence of long-term changes taking place in her back. I’ve shown normal vertebrae and discs in blue and outlined some of the changes in red:
Instead of the smooth distinct junctions of the blue you can see the bony changes taking place along her spine. The radiologist wasn’t convinced this was the cause of her current condition, as many dogs will have these changes without any symptoms. With that being said, Maggie certainly has not been a dog to read the textbooks, and without any other finding to hang my hat on, I’m suspicious these changes may be contributing to some of our problems.
While I was taking the sixth x-ray of the day and finishing drawing the final blood samples, Tom (Dr. Rentschler) and I discussed the many, many unique problems Maggie has been through. The following is a list of either all firsts in my career, or “only in Maggie” cases I have seen: multiple ocular foreign bodies, one of which abscessed; a migrating foreign body in her chest; Grade 3 Mast Cell tumor; and hypoglycemia with blindness. The list of more pedestrian maladies would be hemorrhagic diarrhea (we nearly lost her a year ago), food allergies, inhalant allergies, foot foreign bodies, etc., etc., etc. The sad fact is this dog has been through more major health scares than most pet owners experience in a lifetime of owning pets. She’s lucky she’s owned by a vet, because I’m not sure anyone else could afford to keep her around.
Thankfully, other than the back and some mild arthritis in a hip, all of the diagnostic tests have come back normal. She has begun to perk up, and I’m hoping she’ll be ready to once again share duties in the field with Belle. As Chrissy comments every year, “I’d like just one year without a Maggie-near-death experience.”
Back to the results of our hunt, my easy limit of birds turned into a skunking. I left with two healthy dogs and came home with one on the injured reserve with an undiagnosed condition. Now I realize that things could have been worse, and at the end of the day I really had a good time being out chasing the dogs. That brings us to the title of this post. I always find it amusing when folks espouse that your luck is what you make, because if that was the case I long ago would have found a recipe for some of the good stuff. While I am fortunate to have many blessings in this life I also have a lot of plain crappy luck, and it is a trait that appears to have been genetic. It didn’t take too long into the marriage for Chrissy to begin cursing “Spoo Luck” and the same can be said for my brother-in-law. I’ll confess to not looking into Murphy’s Law’s namesake but I would wager a lot of money that somewhere back in his ancestry you would find a Spoo. Of course with my luck that’s a bet you probably should take.