A Burning in the Chest
An hour after his first find, Two Pete still runs with the speed and intensity you'd expect of a racehorse 5 feet out of the gate. The morning course at Ames Plantation winds through a checkerboard landscape of food plots, timbered ridges, and big fields where the tin roofs of ancient barns rattle in the wind. The gallery, strung out for half a mile, is knotted up in small groups of riders, chatting. Far ahead, scouts and handlers range back and forth. Horses break ice in puddles on the trail, their hooves flashing. Only briefly do the spectators actually get a glimpse of the dogs.

Already Two Pete has run for 10 miles or more. He vaults across a brambly ditch, tunnels through a thick broomsedge tangle where old stone chimneys stand in the thickets, then hits a 30-acre field. The open space seems to kick in his afterburners: Two Pete explodes around the field edge and in moments he's ¿¿three-quarters of a mile away.

Trimble likes what he sees. "That's what the judges are looking for, right there," he says. "A burning in the chest for the bird. A big-running dog ranging back and forth, looking there, there, there, and there, never stopping, never slowing."

In fact, while there's no doubt that finding birds during their 180 minutes in the spotlight is why these dogs are here, there's a lot more to a national champion bird dog than raw numbers. Judges re¿¿ward dogs with heart, style, and power.

"There's no question that part of this is subjective," explains judge Doug Vaughn, a straight-talking Saskatchewan native. "It's not like we're looking for the first dog that crosses the finish line. A dog runs for many, many miles in a single brace, and they have to end up with all the energy and enthusiasm they showed when they started."