Saying goodbye

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By BRENT FRAZEE / The Kansas City Star

Jim Donigan knows exactly how he will pay tribute to his beloved bird dog when she passes away.

He will have her ashes placed in shotgun shells. Then he will travel to the old family farm in Kansas where he and his Brittany enjoyed some of their finest moments, and he will fire a 21-gun salute.

That will scatter his bird dog’s ashes where they belong, he said — a fitting memorial for the perfect hunting companion.

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Dee, a hunting dog, points guides Ruel Cleveland and Rohn Bayman to quail at the Quail Country Lodge in southwestern Georgia. (Steve Hendrix / The Washington Post)

Dee, a hunting dog, points guides Ruel Cleveland and Rohn Bayman to quail at the Quail Country Lodge in southwestern Georgia. (Steve Hendrix / The Washington Post)

“Kimeo is 12½ and this will probably be her last hunting season,” said Donigan, 61, a longtime quail hunter from Kansas City, Mo. “She still has the desire; she still loves to hunt. But she’s only able to stay with it for a couple hours, then I have to put her up.

“She’s been such a great friend, such a great bird dog, that it’s hard to see. When she’s gone, I want to do something special to honor her.

“That’s why I plan to scatter her ashes on our old family farm near Kimeo, Kansas, where she got her name. We had a lot of great times there.”

A dog can make a special tug a dog on the heartstrings. No one knows that better than a hunter. From the moment those bird dogs are puppies, they start living up to their nickname, “man’s best friend.”

We laugh at their boundless energy, clumsy ways and the mistakes they make when they are young. And we marvel at the way they figure things out, searching nonstop for quail and pheasants.

We brag about the good times — the points that were held forever, the difficult retrieves, the times our dogs showed up a field-trial champion in locating birds — and selectively forget the bad times.

We revel in the passion they share with us over the hunt — the way they get so excited when they see us in hunting clothes and know what is about to ensue, they way they bound through a frosty field, and the satisfaction they get from retrieving a bird.

We keep their pictures in our wallets and on bulletin boards in our office cubicles, and we display them to others as if they were part of the family.

And when they pass away, we mourn.

Take it from Donigan. He has experienced that grief.

That’s one of the reasons he and a friend have started a company called The Departing Shot.

Through that business, they offer services that help hunters honor their bird dogs. For some, that means having ashes placed in shotgun shells that can be fired over hallowed hunting ground. For others, that means simply having the shells displayed in a decorative wooden case, the same way as some display an urn.

Whatever the case, Donigan is convinced that there is a demand.

“I remember when a friend lost his German shorthair, Belle,” Donigan said. “We had a little ceremony and buried her near the spot where she got her last covey up.

“For hunters, losing a bird dog is a very tearful, very emotional experience. You grieve, just like when you lose a member of the family or a close friend.”

Dusty Ensley knows all about the grieving process.

He is still mourning the loss of his buddy, Covey.

For the first time in 14 years, he is hunting without the Brittany dog that was like a best friend. And he admits it hurts.

“I have a new Brittany, which I’ve named Limit, and he’s going to be a good one,” said Ensley, who lives in Kansas City. “But it still isn’t the same without Covey.

“He was just one of those special bird dogs that don’t come along every day. Right up to the end, he loved getting out.

“Toward the end, he couldn’t see, he couldn’t hear and he could barely run. But we’d put him down next to a bird we had shot and he’d wag his tail.

“He just lived to hunt.”

Indeed, Ensley and Covey hunted 11 states together, found literally thousands of birds and developed a close bond.

“When I finally had to bring him to my vet this spring to have him put down, it was tough,” Ensley said. “My vet (James Sparks) had hunted with us, and he knew how special that dog was.

“We sat on the floor, told stories about him and just cried.”

Today, Ensley has Covey’s tattered collar hanging from the rear-view mirror in his truck. And it will stay there for a year. Then it will go under the driver’s seat, where the collars of two other long-time bird dogs — Duke and Amigo — now rest.

But that’s not the only reminder Ensley will have of Covey. He also has the bird dog’s likeness on one of his teeth.

“I’ve had more than 30 years of Brittanies, and they were all close friends,” Ensley said. “But Covey was special.”

 

Will Carpenter still pauses at the limestone headstone on a hillside in Greenwood County, Kan., to pay his respects.

He hasn’t forgotten Hawk, the German shorthair bird dog he buried there in 1995.

“My daughter, who was 10 at the time, went out with a hammer and chisel and made that headstone,” said Carpenter, who lives in Towanda, Kan. “We buried him on my grandparents’ old home place at the spot where he pointed his first quail.

“We were all pretty attached to Hawk. He wasn’t only a great bird dog, he was like part of the family.”

Today, Carpenter still hunts the land he and Hawk once roamed. And he still flushes quail in some of the same places where he and his canine friend once found them.

Yes, life has gone on. There are new bird dogs and new adventures. But Carpenter hasn’t forgotten the past.

He still misses Hawk, a one-of-a-kind bird dog.

“Hawk was just a natural,” Carpenter said. “Even as a pup, he was as good as any seasoned dog. He had a good nose, but the thing that made him stand out was his desire.

“There were times when he would be bleeding, but he wouldn’t stand still long enough for me to see what was going on.”

Wayne Baier, who runs the Baier’s Den dog-training and hunting operation near Peculiar, Mo., can relate.

He, too, grieves the loss of a special bird dog. His Brittany, Scooter, died in August at the age of 15. And he is still coping with life without her.

“While I was at the hospital this summer, my wife told me that Scooter was having trouble, too,” Baier said. “The vet came out and said it wouldn’t be long.

“When I got out of the hospital, the first thing I did was go see Scooter. It’s like she was hanging on until she could see me one last time.

“It brought tears to my eyes. You really get attached to these bird dogs.”