By Chad Love

Sometimes you stumble across something that is, well, simply amazing. Such was the case as I was perusing the forums last night on the RetrieverTraining.net website  and came across this thread about a lab named Dex and his owner, Curtiss Lindsay.

Back in February of last year, Curtiss writes, his lab had a litter of nine healthy pups. So far, so good. But a week later they noticed one pup not using its back legs. Several vet visits later, they were told the pup was paralyzed and given the option of either euthanizing the little guy or raising him. The pup came home. But several weeks later little Dex, as he came to be known, got sick, very sick. As it turns out, Dex hadn't been born paralyzed. Shortly after birth his mother had apparently stepped on Dex, dislocating his rear hips, breaking both legs and cutting off the flow of blood. If they wanted to keep Dex, both legs would have to be amputated.

By Chad Love

by Chad Love

One of the most common questions from those new to retriever training is "how many bumpers do I need?" And as always, there's no "right" answer. When I got my first retriever back in college, I had perhaps three or four bumpers of various makes, sizes and condition. But when I first started training on a regular basis with a local pro, he told me "get yourself about 16 white bumpers, a dozen orange and maybe a half-dozen large black-and-white ones. That's a start."

Why the huge disparity in what I thought I needed in college and what he thought I needed? Simply the natural progression and evolution of my training goals and expectations. My first dog wasn't trained to the level my second dog was. She wasn't force-fetched and wasn't trained to handle. She could do simple blinds, but when she veered off her line I had to resort to that most embarrassing of acts, chucking a rock in the direction of the bumper, because, of course, she couldn’t handle. In fact, a good argument could be made that my first retriever wasn't really trained at all. For that level of training (or lack thereof) three bumpers were plenty.

By Chad Love

This is my truck. It's an old, tired, dirty truck with many, many miles on it. The engine and tranny are still basically sound, but a bit tired. The transfer case could do with a rebuild, as could the front end and suspension. It needs new springs and a lot of the normal little stuff any 16-year-old truck needs. It just seemed like a big hassle and I recently decided to replace it with a new truck. So I took a drive to one of my local dealerships. After recovering from the heart attack brought on by seeing new truck prices, I decided maybe my tired, old truck isn't so bad after all.

Now I have to decide exactly what to do with it and how I should fix it up. That's where you come in. I want you to pimp my truck (hypothetically speaking, of course) into the ultimate budget bird-hunting and gundog-transport rig. I already have some ideas, but I want to see what you can come up with.

By Chad Love

"Except for a Kansas farm where I once lived, Grand Junction, Tennessee has spurred me to write more stories than any other place on earth." -- from Bill Tarrant's column "Grand Junction: Bird Dog Capital of the World"

I grew up reading many of Tarrant's columns on the men and dogs who made Grand Junction such a mythologized place for bird dog enthusiasts. And one of these days, at least once, when I have the time, when I have the money, when I learn how to ride a horse, I'm going to make that pilgrimage to Tennessee. I want to watch those dogs run over the same ground that so many famous dogs have trod before. But not this year. The 112th running of the National Field Trial Championship begins on Monday at the Ames Plantation in Grand Junction, so I don’t think I'm going to make it. But I will post a blog about the winner next week.