My first job as a scout for the high school varsity football team was to suggest ways to stop a hard-nosed, All-League redneck running back named Lyle Blankenship.  I couldn't have known that five years later and for nearly a decade after, we would be Road Dogs together, chasing birds and bird dogs in Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, and South Dakota.  He was the kind of friend I needed so badly at the time, a better hunter with a photographic memory of coverts and events, a good shot, an unselfish travel partner, and in the days before digital way-finders, a walking GPS who always got us back to the truck the same calendar day.  Together, we took the Elhew pointer plunge in 1984, starting a relationship with Mr. Wehle that lasted until that great man's death in July of 2002.  Dixie was Lyle's second pointer, our first straight bred Elhew; my Harper Lee continues that tradition here at Longhunter's Rest.  Parts of this article first appeared in RGS Magazine.