By Chad Love

I was perusing the always-excellent Upland Journal forums recently when I came across an interesting thread discussion on spaying and neutering your dogs.

The impetus for the discussion was a recent thesis on spay/neutering that found neutered/spayed dogs to be more aggressive, fearful, excitable and less trainable than intact dogs, as well as significant differences in bone growth between fixed and intact dogs.

Now, one of the most important (and potentially wrenching) decisions a gundog owner must make is whether to have their dogs spayed or neutered. If you ever plan on breeding then obviously the question is moot, but what if you don’t plan on breeding your dogs? What then? Should you get them fixed or leave them intact? It's one of the most contentious issues of dog ownership, with compelling arguments on both sides.

By Chad Love

One of life's great simple pleasures is (for me, anyway) sitting on the truck tailgate on a crisp fall or winter day out in the field, with the dogs at my feet, sipping a hot cup of coffee or tea after a morning's hunt, idly ruminating on Life, The Universe, and Everything. That's the bucolic, highly idealized Corey Ford version, anyway. The reality is, I live in Oklahoma (you know, where the wind comes sweeping down the plains) and usually the wind isn't merely sweeping, it's howling. Which makes preparing my coveted hot beverage a frustrating proposition.
 
A Thermos just doesn't keep water hot enough for my little French press to work effectively, so what I've done in the past is take a little single-burner propane stove and a small teakettle with me on bird-hunting trips. This works fine when the wind is down, but the wind is rarely down in my part of the world. The slightest breeze renders my stove, even with the windshield, not very effective.