Afield Quotes

“All dogs are born with a death sentence, they hunt for us, and then they are gone. They do not get to stay either young or strong forever. It's an old truth but still we have to relearn it with each dog. Rick Bass, in the story Old Dog”
― Robert DeMott, Afield: American Writers on Bird Dogs

“Over the past two seasons, we have become teammates. Jake knows his range and when he pushes it and I call "Here" he turns and reels in without challenge. When I change direction, he races back to get out in front of me without word or whistle. I know better than to try to convince him to investigate a birdy looking spot that he's already passed through - it is barren no matter what I think. If Jake remains on point after a flush, it is no false point - there is another bird in there (and yet, I will always be unready for the rise). When he is out of sight and his brass bell goes silent, I know he will hold the bird until I can get there, at which time their tenuous connection, like a fuse, ignites and the bird breaks free. Jake freezes solid when he has a maybe-bird, except his eyes are loose and follow me worriedly and uncertainly as he waits for me to kick through the brush. Although Jake retrieved to hand the first bird ever shot over him, our compromise is that he does that only when he wants to: he finds birds dead or alive, but he's nobody's delivery boy. That fine, Jake and I understand each other.”
― Jeddie Smith, Afield: American Writers on Bird Dogs

“For my money, training a pointing dog is really a matter of respecting and refining the dog's instincts, and then getting the hell out of the way. As a friend of mine, a first-rate professional handler in our Northeast Kingdom, once put it to me: "Some guys pay me $2,500 for training their bird dogs, but most of it should go into training them." Or, as the late Bill White of Washington County, Maine, once advised me when I was green to this business: Soon as you learn that your dog knows more than you do, you'll be ready to use him right." - Sydney Lea in the story 'Blessed'.”
― Robert DeMott, Afield: American Writers on Bird Dogs

“I'll just say it: I've never liked stories about dogs. Stories about hunting dogs. Sheep dogs. Bloodhounds. St. Bernard's with casks of brandy. Dogs that could talk, count, sing arias, walk on two feet or dance the boogaloo. - Richard Ford, in the foreword 'The Beast at my Feet”
― Robert DeMott, Afield: American Writers on Bird Dogs

“Few things taste better or deliver a more unalloyed experience than wild game we have killed, cleaned, and cooked ourselves (especially grouse, woodcock, teal, wood ducks - birds that simply cannot be domesticated, pen reared, or artificially farmed in any way, shape, or form.) Yet we also realize that, depending on one's degree of personal sensitivity, capacity for ironic reflection, or susceptibility to guilt, there is always that signal moment, when the dog delivers a dead bird to hand, that can occasion a haunting, unresolvable mix of "self-satisfaction and self-reproach," as Texas-born novelist William Humphrey says in Open Season: Sporting Adventures (1986), because "you hold in your hand the creature you both love and love to kill.”
― Robert DeMott, Afield: American Writers on Bird Dogs

“No matter how fast or slow the action, no matter how staunch or bedraggled the point, no matter how unerring or wayward the shots, our chief pleasure has always been in the shared experience of watching dogs work, anticipating the choreography of point, flush, and shot, but also looking sideways, too, carrying on animated conversations about everything under the sun, and perhaps more than anything else, storing up sustaining impressions and vivid memories to call up at times like this when the only hunt worth its name is the hunt for words.”
― Robert DeMott, Afield: American Writers on Bird Dogs

“I’m not a good dog trainer for the same reasons I am not a Republican: I endorse all forms of social anarchy.”
― Robert DeMott, Afield: American Writers on Bird Dogs

“I have come to regret being right about anything anymore.”
― Robert DeMott, Afield: American Writers on Bird Dogs

“kind of person who could achieve anything if only he wasn’t dysfunctional enough not to.”
― Robert DeMott, Afield: American Writers on Bird Dogs