The Medicine, second part
It was more or less a year ago when it was discovered that I suffered from a severe cardiac problem that would take a long time to cure. If you go back to "Torsti's corner" to October 24, 2006 "The Medicine" you can see that I made a prescription of an additional medicine for myself, besides of those given by the doctors, namely our dogs.
It has been a testing time since then but the daily exercise with the dogs has kept me not only alive but also in a relatively good mood. The third and most decisive cardiac operation, a by-pass op., was made august 22 this summer. It was very successful and again, in order to make a long recovery time short, I took help from the dogs. Yesterday, 4 weeks and 3 days after the operation I was able to once again go shooting partridge with Maud and the dogs. Since there was a hint of sun on the sky Maud decided to handle the camera and I would do the shooting.
I preferred to shoot over the other geriatric in the family, the old warrior Foxy. She is over 13 years, more or less deaf and she does what she pleases nowadays. She can cover a field and use the wind as an expert and she finds the birds and knows how to "nail" them to the ground. What happens thereafter is anybody's guess. For example she today refuses to flush the birds even if I lift her rear end and try to push her forward. So I have to kick the grass and get the birds into the air. |
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A little practise with a clay launcher prior to the hunting showed that the heart operation had done nothing but good to my shooting. This cloud of feathers that Maud caught so very precisely with her camera confirmed that my shooting left nothing to be considered.
However the hit looks more devastating than it was. The bird was in no way spoiled for the plate since I used a very light load of US number 8 shot charge.
From this moment Foxy is a much greater danger to the game. There is nothing that can stop her from retrieving on fall and unless you keep a hawk eye on her all the time she might just as well pick the bird and run away from you to eat it. |
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Given the attention she deserves Foxy is a reliable retriever. You could say that she can be your servant but she has never been anybody's slave. Then again, at this high age, she sometimes after a bird or two gets stung by a touch senile dementia and decides to turn the battlefield upside down.
There is not much to do but to walk in the other direction, remember that she is semi-deaf and can at times not be called in. The best cure for this illness is to let her run wild a day in the mountains. Then after this outburst of excessive energy she can behave like a birddog with a masters degree, that she is.
Whatever she is still as an old, senile geriatric a lot of fun and the hallmark from her golden days is still there: Never, ever give up. There will always be still another bird beyond the next ridge! |
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Foxy's daughter Briz is much more manageable on the field. She has been easy like a spaniel to handle but it took many years before she started to gain enough patience to actually hold the point until a gun came up to her. Today she is successfully run at commercial shoots and the guns are pleased with her.
So are we. This day after Foxy started to do her own thing we continued to hunt with Briz and it did not take long before she found something. As she is, like a spaniel, a bush specialist she is wearing a tracking collar.
We have one on Foxy too, nowadays mostly because she is so old and old birddogs with a lot of desire left often die a sudden death on the field as they strain themselves more than their old heart and lungs can take. If it happens we want to find her.
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Briz point produced still another bird and I turned it into a very dead bird.
Briz may not be as bombproof as a retriever as Foxy but then again whatever she does it is much more well mannered. All together we got 4 birds, no crippled, and were pleased with that. |
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At the end of the day a trophy picture is supposed to be taken. Briz and me sat down and wondered when Foxy would be done with her thing. Finally we caught her in mid-flight when she was running past us.
There is a trick, you know, to get her in now that she is deaf but still hot as a stove for more birds. When she is close enough you just wave a dead bird in the air so that she sees it. She will come because she thinks that here is where the action is! |
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