By Ken Blomberg

The hike spurred memories from the past. Passing graves of dogs from days gone by will do just that.

It happened a few years ago after one of several summer storm fronts blew across the river valley and the tornado warnings had expired. We found ourselves on the kennel porch, sipping refreshing drinks and enjoying the cool breeze that followed the storm pushing the hot, humid weather east. While watching a young friend working his cocker spaniels in the prairie grass field east of the kennel, the boss commented, “He reminds me of you at that age.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Good looking, fit and trim, well-trained dogs?”

“No, obsessed—and training dogs on his wedding anniversary no less. I want to meet his wife and warn her.”

“Hey. I only forgot our anniversary twice in thirty years.”

“You mean, two times in thirty-some years—and what about my birthday. How many times on that account? Hmmm?”

“Here we go,” I lamented. “Can we change the subject?”

Silence—my favorite subject. A few minutes later, Buster, our English cocker, jumped up on my lap and pointed his nose into the wind.

“What do you smell, buddy? Could fall be in the air? Or are you smelling that cute little female cocker in the field?

He looked up at me with more questions than answers in his eyes and whined. That translated into, “Can I go out in the field? Go swimming in the pond? Retrieve the training dummy a couple hundred times? Can I? Can I? Can I?”

“Let’s go for a walk,” chirped the boss.

We followed the mowed trail that led to the pond. There we entertained Buster for a spell with a retrieving dummy and walk around the pond. As I recall, the hike spurred memories from the past. Passing graves of dogs from days gone by will do just that. On the high banks of our creek, the bones of my first bird dog lie in a grave. A German shorthaired pointer, Buck found his way into my heart back in 1974. He lived in my dorm room at the local state college for a while, until we were both asked to move off-campus. I learned from Buck much of what I now know not to do when training a gun dog. He lived a couple months shy of sixteen years. Not far from his grave lies Maddie.

Owned and trained by son Karl, I recalled the day we buried her and the simple, poignant words from a fourteen-year-old boy in her memory, “She was a good dog.” Around the corner, along several rows of pines, lie Duke, Kane, Buck Junior, Little Bucky, Tucker, Mac and Jack. The trail led back to a pond in the training field where Dakota and Rocky rest under a weeping willow tree. Near the pond, a pair wolf trees left by the previous landowner, farmer Fred, marks a long list of female shorthairs—Tina, Dusty, Shana, Coco, Munch, Cody, Bingo, Molly, Becky II, Suzy, Mossy, Jerzy, Mossy II and Becky III.

Somewhere else on trails cutting through our forty acres are the final resting points for Cash, Pokey and Spook—three shorthairs that called son Erik their very own. And finally, along the trail leading away from the pond is a small wooden cross marking Little Rock’s stone-covered grave—a constant reminder that sometimes, good dogs die young.

Buster worked the cover along the edges of the trail like he was on a mission. But then again, he’s a cocker and that’s their life calling—finding and flushing birds for their master. But by the willow tree, he paused to mark his territory on Dakota’s grave. “Now, how did he know Dakota was one of my favorites?” I thought.

On the tail of a storm that day we reminisced, took a stroll down memory lane and returned to the kennel, where the next generation of German pointers and English cockers waited in their runs. A litter of pups in the whelping room had just opened their eyes and were intent on their mother’s care. The outside kennel runs needed cleaning, and it was time for the dogs to be fed once again.