Even at 1:30 in the morning, the Wal-Mart parking lot in a small Appalachian town is never deserted. A sheriff’s cruiser slowly checks scattered knots of compact cars and dirty pickups. Young people, arms folded, underdressed, leaning against their vehicles, their hard laughter and tendrils of cigarette smoke cutting the cold March air.
But as far as I could tell, nobody else is there to meet a white and orange ticked English setter in from West Virginia by way of New Jersey.
The details are not important. A broken payment agreement. A sleazy sale trumpeted on social media. A promise of legal action. A swift buy-back by the original owner and a ride hitched with a sympathetic breeder headed west. What did matter was the dog’s condition.
“I think he’s OK,” his rescue chauffeur had written in a text after picking the dog up from the surrendering party. “But he needs a bath. I mean…he really needs a bath!”
I’m rereading our back-and-forth texts when a new model dark blue truck swings in off the four-lane and noses down the ramp into the Wal-Mart lot. Chuck, a friend I’ve never met, steps down out of the cab, shakes my hand, then makes small talk about his drive west as he walks me back to his pickup’s tailgate.
Even though the dog is secured in a crate strapped to the front of the long truck bed, I can smell Firelight Seth as soon as his driver opens the hatch. That isn’t the worst of it.
Released from the box, the big setter steps to the tailgate and stands tall, quietly sifting through the night smells. I slip a jaeger lead over his elegant head and give him a quick going over. Uneven shadows thrown by parking lot security lights cannot hide the dog’s emaciation, the rotten coat, tufts of matted hair roaching from between his toes, nails arched like talons.
Chuck, a very kind and passionate setter man, shakes my hand again and climbs back into his pickup. Later he confesses that even after eleven hours at the wheel, he tossed sleeplessly in his hotel room, so disturbed was he by Seth’s condition.
Driving back to my farm, I catch glimpses of the dog in the rearview mirror, a silent, watchful profile. Seth is “family,” littermate to a five-year-old gun dog I admire a great deal named Firelight Mustang Sally. Sally also happens to be the mother of my good Deacon dog. The plan is to host Seth for a few weeks while his “New Old Owner” concludes business in Kansas before moving lock, stock, and setter pack to Michigan. She would reunite with Seth on her way through.
It is nearly 3am when we pull into my farmyard. I clip a check cord to Seth’s filthy collar and let him air out to a chorus of greetings and challenges from his temporary pack mates. He ignores both them and me as he listlessly goes about his business.
I walk him into the kitchen for the remains of the night. Seth picks at a bowl of food before allowing me to ease him into a crate in the corner by the freezer. I lie in bed listening to him bark and whine and grumble til almost dawn before he finally gives in and sleeps.
We are up a couple of hours later, and for the first time, I turn him out in the fenced back yard. The quality bred into him is obvious - the beautiful frame, the flashing, flowing athleticism, the dark, intelligent eyes. As I snap cell phone photos for his lawful owner, Seth’s head snaps to attention. Quail are calling from the pen set back above the yard. That shoots a bit of buzz into his stalking up and down the chain link, eager to hear more.
What he does not do is approach me without being bidden. It isn’t as if he is avoiding me as much as it just doesn’t matter to him that I am there.
My chore coat pockets are stuff with greasy bits of chopped hot dogs. I offer a piece whenever Seth’s long reaching gait brings him near. It takes a half dozen passes before he finally cannot resist, knocking back the hot dog chunk liked the half-starved dog he is. Even so, he makes it clear that I am nothing more than a treat dispenser, not nearly as compelling as the scent markers left by other dogs that use this yard.
Finally I bribe Seth in with the last of the hot dog pieces and leash him for the walk to the truck. We have a date with Steve DeBruin.
Feeder Creek Veterinary Services is the kind of old school, large animal/small animal clinic to be trusted with common sense evaluations and thoughtful treatment. Dr. DeBruin is the clinic’s patriarch, a trusted friend of nearly twenty years.
At check-in, I wheedle a reluctant Seth on to the scales. The technician patiently lets the dog settle in. Numbers flash on the read-out.
She turns, eyebrows raised. “Not quite 48,” she says, writing on his chart.
48 pounds…on a dog built to carry 60 in condition.
I offer a thumbnail sketch of Seth’s background as we move into the exam room for a nose to tail evaluation. My worst fear is heartworm; those tests and all others come back negative. The young women in attendance make a big deal over him, and for the very first time, his Inner Seth begins inching out. When we are finally ready for the vet, a heretofore aloof, phlegmatic setter is a gooey mess - wriggling and posing and sopping up every ounce of attention.
Steve DeBruin grew up bird hunting behind an English setter. At one point during his part of the exam, he pockets his stethoscope and says confidently, “Well, he was certainly neglected. And my God, he needs a bath. But I think he’ll be alright.”
Seth ducks under the vet’s broad, deft hands and cadges a pet. “They didn’t starve his soul,” Steve says. “He’ll come back.”
The vet trip was a new beginning. When we unloaded back at the farmyard, Seth bounced from the truck. I let him drag the checkcord as he made the rounds – kennels, horse corral, pigeon loft. I dropped to a knee (on top of the check cord, Seth’s recall a tad bit rusty) and tolled him in with whistles and claps. He rubbed against me while I loved on him, albeit holding my breath the whole time.
I have lived on a farm for more than five decades. I am, shall we say, habitually resistant to odor. But in my entire experience with livestock of every kind, I have never been close to a living domestic animal that smelled worse than Seth.
This wasn’t a job for my big washtub and cold well water. We needed a pro.
I had no previous experience with a groomer, but I had one in mind. The following afternoon found Seth and me clients of another longtime friend, Jenn Turnes, owner of Turning Tails Pet Company, a complete service grooming, boarding and daycare center about twenty minutes north of the farm. She and her staff work from the model of careful, personal attention to the needs and temperament of each individual dog.
At first, Seth retreated back into his shell, cowed by the washroom and the ramp into the sparkling stainless steel tub. But Jennifer Turnes is precisely the person I want handling my dogs in a service situation – easy, sure, upbeat without being silly, quietly professional from start to finish.
Maybe I only imagined her eyes watering from Sethstench as she said, “Uh…He’s going to need ‘Maximum Impact’,” referring to her industrial strength shampoo, “and maybe more than one application.”
Boy, howdy.
Seth walked up into the tank and stood uneasily when it latched closed behind him. Jennifer took her time, allowing him to get comfortable as the water began to run over him. There was concern in his deep, smart, eyes, but that’s when the quiet mind put there by his breeding kicked in. He accepted the situation in faith and trust, and Jennifer worked her magic, in fact, worked overtime magic beyond her shop’s close, satisfied at last that Seth no longer smelled as if he’d been dunked in a kennel’s septic tank.
Over the next few days, Seth found a rhythm that suited him, a place within my pack of Labradors, two other setters, and a token Elhew pointer. He exercised with the others in the big dogapalooza enclosure we call “Thunderdome.” He held his own, jostling at the treat jar. He had a favorite nap pillow in the kitchen while I wrote and his own spot near my bed at night.
Seth’s appetite had gone from frantic wolfing to eager pleasure, quality feed garnished with free range raw eggs gifted by a generous farmer friend, no stranger to stoking up refugee dogs. I began to see the first hint of weight gain.
A week out from his spa date with Jennifer, I could hold off no longer. Every night at dusk, we had woodcock singers all over the farm. I badly wanted to see Seth on game. With his owner’s permission, we went to the field.
Five minutes into the run, we were in trouble. Seth was timid. Underfoot. Slinking around as if waiting for correction. I knew this dog’s bloodline. More importantly, I knew what he’d been his first year before the sale, the good work he’d done on wild birds.
I also recalled emails and social media posts full of superlatives his former owner had sent after some of Seth’s first grouse hunts for him, how he’d described the dog as “on fire” with fine performance.
But I also remembered other communication from the same man, this one after questions about payment still owed turned sour, griping about sudden cluelessness and headstrong behavior.
Watching Seth creep around with his tail tucked, it was obvious that someone had “taken care” of the headstrong thing.
We made a desultory stab at a long brushy fencerow and turned toward the big alder patch. The cover there is wicked, a six years’ clear cut. Though the alders have come back enough to bring woodcock, they are not the size needed to shade out the cane briars. Seth wanted no part of any of that. He eased down the creek bank instead, and we were headed for home.
I didn’t tell the New Old Owner. I figured it could wait until she asked. Meanwhile, we’d give Seth more recovery time, more play time, more just-being-a-dog-time, clean, well-fed, with lots of contact and a routine that lent security and trust.
Three days later, we are headed back to the woods. I walk Seth at heel out behind the barn, then east up a tractor path. He wilts as I bell him, and on the release, he simply trots forward, splashing through tractor rut puddles left from the morning’s rain.
It is a repeat of our first trip - Seth with droopy ears and tail, mincing along the two-track. Twice, songbirds perk him a bit, but he makes only tentative passes toward the brush lining the path. I literally trip over him when he halts abruptly at a commotion up the hill. A deer we’d started snorts and huffs from cover not forty yards distant. Seth moonwalks away from the sound, then falls back in beside me.
We stumble on that way toward the alders, my heart dropping with every step.
Maybe Doc DeBruin was wrong. Perhaps more had been stolen from Seth after all.
I slow down, giving the dog time to creep at least a bit out front. He carefully stays free of that nasty alder brake, poking along until we are given the gift we so desperately need.
Seth pauses, his head lifting into the breeze. Two tentative steps bring him to a stop on the alders’ fringe.
The stand is tentative, more question than statement, but he holds there while I fumble with the camera. I am moving in toward the dog when I hear what I have been dying to hear. It’s the twitter-up of a woodcock flush, bless ‘im, one that had been loafing along the edge where this good dog could happen upon him. The bird skitters away through bare trees.
Seth goes limp at the flush. He turns to look back at me. “Did I screw up again,” he seems to ask.
Nope. I praise him to the heavens, and he collapses into his signature wriggle-wag.
“Bird,” I say, laughing like a fool, wriggle-wagging a bit myself. “Bird! Attaboy, Seth!”
That breaks the spell, the dog tearing down the line of alders. I tug my cap down tight, find a less menacing opening, and step into the alders, shoving me way toward a drowned out opening, sorry I’d not worn a hockey goalie’s mask and gloves. But it’s all good, as I hear Seth before I see him, a white and orange pile driver crashing back to me.
We are in business now. I heel him a few steps through the wet, then cast him upwind. That’s when a second bird goes out to my right, a short hop that barely clears the treetops before he banks hard left and down.
Seth has a line on that one. He rushes in, bulling through briars and past his own nose, bumping that woodcock into a flight that carries the bird out of the covert, corkscrewing back up the hillside where we’d jumped the deer. Seth stands steady for a three-count, then darts a dozen yards along the woodcock’s flight path, stops, turns…and plunges back into the alders, back to work, pushing hard now across in front of me.
Suddenly, this is the day we dreamed of when we planted the original black alder starts 31 years before. There are woodcock scattered through the covert, a veritable soul kitchen for Seth’s malnourished spirit.
His next two points smolder with intensity and a glimmer of style. He pays no attention to the blank gun marking each rise, and I say nothing to him as he gives a quick chase on the flush. None of this is about manners. All of it is about restoring a gun dog’s groove.
Seth has another find back on the edge as we turn for home, then counts coup on the woodcock he’d run up, pointing it staunchly in an apron of briars that drape up the hill above the alders. I let him hunt all the way home, his bell finally clattering into the barnyard where his gun dog friends scold him for leaving them behind.
I take a knee and wait for him to dance in, eager now for the fuss he’s sure he’s earned. These were spring woodcock, a far cry from the Lake States ruffed grouse that will be his stock and trade for the rest of his life. But we take time to celebrate as I unbuckle the bell collar. For what seems like the 1,010th time, we remind each other that Seth, indeed, is a damned fine bird dog just waiting to be reborn this autumn.
**************************************************************
Seth is home with his original breeder/owner. Where he lives, there are ruffed grouse literally out the front door of the house he shares with a pack of Ryman-type English setters that gathered him in with hardly a riffle.
Yesterday, I received a photo of that rangy orange belton, his ribs nicely covered, his coat shiny and smooth, a joy to his look that nearly burns through my computer screen.
I stand up from my desk, renewed again in the forgiving nature of dogs, and look for my boots and whistle. Those who’ve waited their turn while Seth reclaimed his mojo are long overdue for a romp.