Part IV-B
After a fitful night of sleep, Trey was the first one up. He had two horses and he picked the younger one who had a better lope. Good handlers move forward at a fast walk while their scouts gallop wherever they are needed to help keep track of the dogs. Sal pulled hard as Trey led her to the line for the first brace in the chill of the prairie morning. The sun had just cleared the eastern horizon and begun its climb into another cloudless sky as the prairies stretched seemingly forever in all directions. With a nod from the judges, Trey and the other scout turned the dogs loose, mounted up, and rode out on either side of the main party. The dogs separated after a couple of minutes forcing the scouts to switch sides as Trey’s charge went to the left and the other dog headed to the right side of the course.
Trey could see Sal clearly as she crossed mowed ground and wove in and out of the round bales scattered around the half section field. He loped his horse farther to the left without getting in front of the judges as the dog seemed to shrink as she opened the distance between herself and the field trial party. As she reached the edge of the field he saw her turn and stop. Trey looked to her handler who continued to sing to the dog. He apparently couldn’t see her from where he was. Trey yelled to get his attention and then raised his hat in the time honored tradition of signaling a dog on point. The banker, one of the judges, and most of the gallery turned and headed for Trey at a gallop. He pointed forward, and walked his horse towards the dog. They all arrived at the same time. Trey got down and took the reins from the banker’s horse as the handler walked in to flush the birds. A big covey of Huns blew out and flew far before setting their wings and gliding over a slight rise in the ground.
They watered the dog and Trey held her until the banker was back in the saddle. He called the dog into heel and took off to regain the front. The judge, Trey, and the gallery that had come to see the find followed. Once they caught up the banker slowed his horse to match the other handler and his dog shot out to the front this time going to the right side. Trey followed and almost rode ahead of everyone before he realized the course was following the dog. He slowed a bit and swung out a little more to the right. So did Sal; she was on a mission, going forward on the right side of the course lifting her head slightly but not slowing down as she passed each objective. Every time Trey would lose sight of her behind a bluff, he would get a twinge of fear in his gut and push his horse a little harder. He checked the progress of the handlers who seemed to be riding on with no concern. When he turned back to look for the dog, she went behind a bluff and did not show on the other side. He wanted to call point but he wasn’t sure if she had stopped or gone on and he’d missed her.
He aimed his horse at the bluff and pushed up from a lope to a gallop. He had bought the horse in South Carolina
Trey turned to the field trial party and raised his hat. They weren’t there. They had apparently ridden into a small dip in the prairie and were out of sight. There was only one thing to do. He spurred his horse and galloped off in the direction he had last seen them. When he got to the high ground they were still well away from him and he once again yelled and raised his hat. Again the cavalry charge came at his signal. He turned his horse towards Sal, whom he could see from his vantage point. She never moved. When the banker got to him, Trey pointed to Sal and followed him and the judge to the dog. This time, a brood of sharptails blew out of the bluff when the banker went in to flush. Sal raised her head and watched them sail over the prairie.
Once again they watered her, and then heeled her to the front. Trey figured the hour had to be just about over. He looked down at his watch and couldn’t believe that they were only at the halfway point. He knew the watch had to be right; it ran on solar power and was regularly updated by the national atomic clock in Fort Collins , Colorado
When the judge called time, Sal was once again just a speck on the horizon. Trey and the banker took off at a full gallop and headed for Sal. She heard and then saw them coming and knew the time was up for the day. She thought about finding more birds and her desire almost overwhelmed her need to do as she’d been trained. Caught in the dilemma she neither went on nor came to her owner. She waited for them to come to her. They watered her, put her in the harness, and she pulled hard as they rode to the dog truck and the start of the next brace. As they put her in the truck, the other participants came and slapped the banker on the back or shook his hand. Everyone there wanted to win the trial, but they knew the hour they’d just seen Sal put down was something special and would be hard to beat. There were even a few who thought the Day Dog from yesterday should still be on top, but they were a distinct minority and speaking more from a personal bias for the other dog than from an objective analysis of the two performances.
The lawyer was up next with the banker scouting. The dog did well, had a single find, and was capable of winning, but not on this day. Field trial dogs are like baseball hitters – the very best of them will place 3 out of 10 times. Many hit 200 or less and are still top competitors. A dog that approaches Ted Williams’s magical 400 average is as likely to come along as is another Ted Williams. That afternoon Bobby’s customer from Atlanta
At dinner, Bobby, Mack, John, and the four owners sat at a picnic table eating hamburgers from the grill and talked about Sal’s performance. They all laughed as Trey got all wound up telling about his scouting and his headlong dash across the prairie to find the dog on her second find. They all knew the feeling, that rush of adrenalin in the heat of competition when for that hour nothing else exists except the horse between your legs and the dog punching holes in the horizon. The bank transactions, the bust in the housing market, the thoughts of the jury all disappeared as they concentrated on their dog and its performance. For the three other owners whom Trey now considered his friends, the thousands of dollars they spent each year on their dogs would be worth it if all they got out of it was this one day on the Canadian prairies where their cellphones didn’t work and they felt a connection with all the thrills and traditions of the sport.
As a boy, Trey had loved field trials because he got to spend time with his grandfather all to himself. But after today he had come to understand why his grandfather had loved it. He silently thanked the old man, long gone, for the gift he had given him. He hoped he would still feel the same way after he ran Jack. His stomach began to turn as he thought about the morning. His greatest fear was that he would do something to mess up the dog.
He was quiet in the truck as they rode back to the motel and once they were in the room, Preacher John turned to him knowing what he was thinking, “The dog knows his job. He’s done this many times. You just got to relax and let him do it.”
“Just relax. That’s easy to say.”
“What’s the worst that could happen?”
Trey thought about that for a moment, “There’s all sorts of things. I could lose him. I could flush the birds wrong. I could . . .”
“You’ve been doing just fine in workouts, just think of it as another workout.”
“But it’s not.”
“You played ball in college, did you go into a game thinking about all the things that could go wrong?”
“No, sir, but . . .”
“No but to it. Think about the course – where the dog’s likely to find birds. Trust your scout and act like you’ve got all the confidence in the world.”
Trey reached up and shut of the light, “I’ll try.”
“That’s all any of us can do.”
John was soon snoring lightly while Trey tossed and turned. Buster finally gave up on the bed and curled up on the carpeting between them. Trey must have finally fallen asleep at some point because he woke suddenly thinking he had slept through the alarm. When he looked at the clock he realized it would not go off for another half hour. He laid there for a few minutes than gave up and slipped into the bathroom for his shower and shave. Dressed, he hooked a lead to Buster and took him out for a walk. The cold morning air helped settle him a little and by the time he got back to the truck John, Bobby, and Mack were ready to go. Bobby looked at Trey with a smile on his face, “We thought maybe you skipped out on us.”
Trey started to answer but John cut him off, “Leave him alone or I’ll tell some of the stories from when you first started running some dogs for me.”
“Did he get nervous?” Trey wanted to know.
“He ran to the outhouse more than once before he ran in his first championship and I suspect the nerves had his stomach and his bowels reacting kinda adversely, to put it delicately.”
“How’d he do?”
John looked at his former protégé and waited. Finally, Bobby spoke, “Let’s see, I fell off my horse, I almost shot the judge with the wad from the blank in my shotgun, and, at about the 40 minute mark with three finds already in the book, I lost the dog.”
“Well, if that’s the standard I have to shoot for I might be able to do this.”
They all laughed and got in the truck. Bobby fired up the diesel and drove them back out to the grounds where in the predawn glow they tended the dogs and horses. The other owners arrived and they all began saddling up. Trey was going to ride his other horse to handle from. He was a quiet horse with a really smooth walk. The banker was going to scout for Jack and had asked to ride the horse Trey had been on when Sal ran 24 hours ago.
Mack brought Rebel Yell over in a roading harness and hitched him to Trey’s horse. Trey turned to Bobby, “So, all I have to do is stay on my horse, not shoot anyone, and finish with the dog.”
Bobby smiled at him, “That’s about it.”
Bobby, Mack, and John would be passive observers at the back of the gallery. It would be up to Trey, his scout, and the dog for the next hour. Trey was braced with one of the older gentlemen at the trial who had known his grandfather and had had dogs with John back in the day. The scouts got down and hitched a lead to their respective dogs then handed them back the roading harnesses and ropes. Once those were stowed on the saddles, they walked the dogs to the starting line and waited for the judges. Trey was already feeling overdressed and peeled off his jacket despite the fact that the temperature was still around 50 degrees.
With a nod from the judges the scouts let go of the dogs. Rebel Yell turned and looked up at Trey as if he was checking to see who was behind him this time and then turned to the front and was gone. The other dog had a couple of stride head start but Jack soon passed him and headed off to the left as though Sal had told him there were birds way over there at the edge of the hay field – and there were. The banker raised his hat and Trey followed by one of the judges and some of the gallery loped over. The Huns flew just like they had the previous morning and they were soon rushing to catch the front. When they caught up, Jack was on a mission and blew by everyone like they weren’t even there. Trey was so excited that he went forward with him keeping his horse at a lope, as he passed the other judge and the rest of the gallery. He went by the other handler the same way and was soon a couple hundred feet in front of him before he realized he needed to slow down. He brought his horse down to a flat walk and had to fight him a little to keep him there until the other handler showed up. The old man smiled at him, “Take some deep breaths, we still have more than 50 minutes.”
Trey looked down at his watch just as the stopwatch function reached 10 minutes. He still had plenty of time to shoot someone, fall off his horse, or lose the dog. When they reached the section of the course where Sal had her second find, the banker swung wide trying to keep Jack in sight. When Trey reached the point where the course began to turn away from where the dog had gone, he wasn’t sure what to do. He stopped and his bracemate whose dog was in plain sight continued to ride to the front. Trey continued to call on the dog. The judge who was watching Jack rode up beside him, “You can either ride on and hope he shows to the front or we can head over that way and take a look ourselves.”
“I’d like to go look, if that’s ok?”
“No problem.”
Trey and the judge, along with the two others, who had begun referring to the four of them as Team Bobby, began to ride off where they had last seen the dog. When they got to the high ground where Trey had signaled to them the morning before, they could see the banker headed their way with the dog running along beside him. When Jack saw Trey and the others he shifted up into high gear and soon was streaking away from them to the front. They continued on without incident catching sight of the two dogs from time to time as they hit all the objectives to the front. When they reached the fence line where Sal had her third find, Jack took the line – took it all the way to a corner which was almost three quarters of a mile away. He paused briefly just to get his bearings, causing Trey to start to reach for his hat, and then broke to the front at an angle that would have him cross in front of Trey about the time the hour ended.
The judges called time and Trey rode off to round up Jack. He and the banker were soon back at the truck. Trey was disappointed and excited at the same time. He knew that with only one find and a race they wasn’t up to his sister’s, Jack was not going to hit a home run today. But Trey hadn’t fallen off his horse or shot anyone, and he had the dog in the harness. He gave Jack a big hug and then lifted him up into an empty box in the dog truck. His heart was still beating faster than normal but he was coming down from the adrenalin that had come and gone during the hour. John brought him a bottle of water and a donut and they all congratulated him on living through his first hour as a field trialer.
John clasped his arm and leaned in close, “Your grandfather would be some proud of you today.”
Trey turned away, knowing the truth to it, and wiped a tear from his eye.
The seven of them, Team Bobby, rode the last three braces together at the back of the gallery. The banker hardly said a word as he watched the other dogs and handlers give it their best shot as they tried to beat Sal who most assumed was winning the championship. But each came up short in one way or another. They didn’t run as hard or as big or find as many birds. When they got back to camp, the AFTCA secretary blew her whistle and they all gathered in front of the porch steps. This was a lot less imposing a setting than the steps of the “Big House” on the Ames Plantation where the National is run but the air was still full of anticipation. She unfolded the slip of paper and then looked at those gathered around her, first she thanked them all and mentioned all the sponsors, then looked back at the slip of paper, “The judges want to give an honorable mention to Trey Sutton and Rebel Yell.”
Everyone clapped politely and those closest to him shook Trey’s hand. Trey knew they did it in part because this was his first time at a trial but he still appreciated the gesture. The dog from the first brace was called as runner-up and then the secretary paused while the owner was congratulated and received his plaque and ribbon. Then she looked down at the slip of paper again and read, “This year’s champion is Rebel Girl.”
Team Bobby was truly excited and most at the trial offered sincere congratulations to her owner, scout, and trainer. That afternoon the open stakes started and Bobby and Mack went back to work. The developer from Georgia
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