I had Fox's national TV news on in the background this morning, when the word “dog” filtered through my otherwise dedicated focus to putting commas in the correct place in the manuscript I was working on. I stopped typing and looked up to see a story about a Navy Seal who'd died in an early August Chinook helicopter crash. Seems his dog, Hawkeye, appeared to be as broken up as the soldier's human family and lay quietly next to his master's casket throughout the funeral service. You can see the video link here: https://homepost.kpbs.org/2011/08/dog-wont-leave-fallen-navy-seals-side-video/.
Now, you're probably wondering why I included this in a blog about hunting and hunting guns. Well, I yelled at my own dog, my pointer Highway, yesterday, when he attempted for the umpteenth time to climb in my lap and correct my typing, and when I remembered how he dipped his ears, looked backwards at me, drooped his tail and kind of slunked away, the guilt crept in. Sure, he was annoying the livin' bejeesus out of me, much as he's done a hundred other times. But if I get even close to the kind of connection with him that that soldier had with his dog, then I'm surely a better person for it. So, next time your birddog pees on the floor, chews up the leg on your dining room table, fails to fetch that bird across the other side of the swamp, or creeps on a fussy pheasant, do what you have to do to correct the behavior–and then remember to hug him before you go to bed each night.
The Author Recommends: I have to say, I'm so touched by the story of the soldier and his dog, I don't really have a specific recomendation for a book related to this post. So, I guess what I'd ask all of you to do is go to the www.GunDigestStore.com and pick something, anything that catches your eye and remember that this man fought and died to help protect every one of your Constitutional rights, especially the right to free speech and to bear arms. Carry on … .
