By Chad Love

Last year while on the road, I stumbled across an old, old book in thrift shop. And yes, I am a thrift shop junkie. In college I even worked for a couple years in a local Goodwill store. But I still have no idea what "popping tags" means...

Anyway, the book was a copy of John Tainter Foote's "Pocono Shot," which was about a bird dog. The book had an incredibly touching and poignant inscription from a grandfather to his grandson on the front endpaper. You can read about it here.

By Chad Love

Ideally, we'd all like to have acres and acres of land for our dogs to roam and play in without fear of them wandering off and getting lost, hit by a car or stolen. Unfortunately for most of us, it rarely works out that way, and owning a dog generally means conforming to the often inconvenient or difficult realities of our lives.

Such is the case with me. Although I live on a couple acres in a semi-rural environment, I cannot, for aesthetic, topographical and financial reasons, build a fence around my entire property. It's not a problem most of the time. The dogs are always with me when I'm outside. They know not to chase the neighborhood deer and they generally stick close to the house. But when I'm inside for any length of time, whichever dogs aren't on house rotation must be kenneled. I know many people do it, but I'm just not comfortable letting my dogs roam free when I'm not out with them.