Making Peace With the Great Unknown

Losing eye contact with a dog in the field is an occupational hazard where I hunt. These are not mowed fields, but thick hedgerows bordering corn, soy, twisting creek bottoms, and fallen timber, with poison ivy, Virginia creeper, and multiflora rose covering all.

I have never lost a dog overnight, but I have lost a dog for several hours as they kept something bottled up underground.

I think falconers, hog- and bear-dog men, and those of us who run working terriers have to make peace with the Great Unknown, which is the fact that when the crate is opened, and the tail gate drops, we cannot always be sure that our well-loved animals will be back with us that night.

Small injuries, of course, are par for the course -- squirrel-bit hawk talons, smashed feathers, ripped muzzles, barbed wire scrapes, and cut pads. Such stuff may take two or three weeks to heal, but they are part of the hunt and are fully recoverable.

The Big Fear is not small injury -- it is the specter of complete loss; the bird that flies over the horizon never looks back, the dog that goes to ground unseen and that never reappears, or the dog that runs up the mountain and never comes down again.

The good news is that such things are rare in the world of working terriers.

My dogs hunt with two collars on them, each with a slide tag engraved with my cell phone, home phone, and web site address. The dogs are micro-chipped as well. If a person finds my dogs, the human in that equation can certainly find me fast!

But there is always the Great Unknown. We all hope to never meet it, but if you run terriers, hounds, and hunting birds, you are always on the clock. You have to make peace with it. You have to learn to quiet your heart and numb your brain a bit.

Do not project.

Do not give up.

And remember that there is always more to life than longevity.

We all owe life a death. Perhaps (please God) not on this day, but it is debt that will be paid whether you live a life inside the fence or out.

I am comforted by the fact that my dogs have lived fully self-actualized lives.

They have been outside the fence. They have been off the leash.

When my dogs dream, they do not dream as rabbits, but as half-wild wolves.

They do not dream of the fireplace, but of the field.

And, above all, they know they have been loved, all their lives, for who they truly are -- hunting dogs born for field and forest, hedgerow and hole.