Long summer and a slow forum. We did this on the PDJ forum years ago and it was fun. Pictures may be included. Simply pick up after the last post and keep it moving. I'll start . You go next.

My wife brought her home in a shoe box. She was a white and liver pointer. We named her Cocoa. I lived in an apartment inside the loop in an apartment in Houston. There was a power line easement near my apartment. I took her there when she was six months old. It seemed like she knew what to do. She pointed three coveys on her first outing......

I hope I'm doing this correctly....

My bird dog, Ellie, was a gift to me that I didn't want to take. I said yes when he told me it was my kennel or the shelter.



She's a half-breed but her heart is 100% bird dog. Tireless, rugged and with a killer instinct she's a bobwhite's worst enemy.

There were bobwhite quail everywhere west of Houston in 1967 when Cocoa turned 9 months old. I fell in with a friend from the Sealy area. We had free access to at least 50 coveys. I hunted Cocoa the first season in that area and moved to Dallas the next spring....

My 1st bird dog was named Joe. 1st dog I personally trained or he trained me.... I used the wing at first when he was a pup and a frozen bird to train him to retrieve. He was a gift from a trainer in Bowie, TX. My dad had went to pick his dog and Joe was the product of an accidental breeding. The trainer wanted me to have a pup and selected Joe for me. Liver head with a blaze and a football on top of his head, ticked body and a straight tail he carried high.

At 4 months we were working dogs one evening in late September behind the Highway department in Wichita Falls. It was enclosed with a cyclone fence. Joe pointed his first bird about 50 yards from the fence and the bird flushed and Dad shot the blank gun (at least I think it was a blank gun) about the time the bird hit the cyclone fence and he dropped right there. Joe was hot on his tail and brought him back to me and the bird was still alive. I was praising him and really excited and I set the bird down. It flew off and this time over the fence.

That was all it took for the addiction. Now as Joe aged he developed a habit of taking off as soon as the tailgate and shell cover was raised. before we could get geared up he would come sneaking back about halfway to us. He would then turn around and head back and pause to see if we were following. Sure enough he would sneak and stalk all the way back to the covey he had found and point them.

When I got into High School football I did not have time to hunt and my Dad sold him to a preacher. I was fit to be tied. When I was 22 years old I ran into that preacher and asked him about Joe. He said he was the best dog he ever owned. He told me about taking friends out hunting and they thought he was lying about Joe going out finding a covey of birds and then coming back to get ya to go shoot them. He said he would do it almost every time.

He invited me to his house to see Joe. When I went ol' Joe was as excited to see me as I was to see him. Then the preacher said come over here and there in that pen was a litter of pups out of Joe. One little male was the spitting image of Joe. He gave him to me. He was a great dog too but not as good as Joe. Oh by the way, I named him Joe too. Since then I have learned one should not name a dog Joe because it sounds like whoa. Never was a problem for those 2 dogs. LOL