JENNY
By
Charles Fergus 

I swore that when my old spaniel died, I wouldn't write yet another teary tribute from a hunter to his dog. Rather I’d describe who Jenny was, and what she did, and let the reader judge how much she meant to me. I bought her in 1986. A typical Springer, she was intelligent, merry, and affectionate. She came into my life at a time when I could give her lots of attention. She was in her prime during a stretch of years when ruffed grouse, my favorite quarry, were plentiful. She taught herself how to hunt grouse and she taught me how to hunt behind a dog.
A Springer spaniel is a flushing dog: when it smells hot bird scent, it charges in on the game and puts it to flight. The strategy works on pheasants, woodcock, and grouse with Jenny’s help, I bagged many birds. Jenny was a sure retriever. She would swim into beaver ponds and flowing creeks to fetch wood ducks and mallards I’d brought down; she recovered wounded ducks that had hidden in the fecund, scent filled environment.
“Rough-shooting” is a British term for hunting a variety of game- whatever offers itself during the course of hung. Jenny was a master at it. I even wrote a book about our shared days afield, entitling it a Rough-Shooting Dog.
We hunted grouse more than any other game. Over the years, Jenny taught herself to go slowly and quietly, to flow through the cover, checking out blow downs and grape tangles, moving like a fox until she picket up scent. The flushing grouse, intent on escaping the dog, sometimes offered a shot.
One particular hunt comes to mind, on the final day of 1996 late season. On the edge of a hazel patch, ten year-old Jenny showed scent, her tail going from double to triple time. She dived into the cover. The bird powered out low, and when I swept the gun up and pulled the trigger, the grouse flinched and went failing onward.
Thanks goodness for Jenny’s educated nose and her ability to mark, which had remained undiminished despite her clouded eyes. There was now snow on the mountain; I followed Jenny until she struck scent. She carried the trail to a drift of leaves against a log. There she dug out the grouse and gave it to me.
For me, the fetching back of game is the most beautiful and elemental aspect of the hunt. It is burned into my memory happening as it did so many times; Jenny emerging from the brush with a bird in her jaws, her eyes on mine.
We had other hunts together after that, but they became fewer, and shorter, and finally ceased after Jenny became deaf. Plus I’d a spaniel to train and introduce to upland.
Jenny had had her share of the birds. When I laid my friend in her grave, I placed the tail fans of two grouse n her winding sheet. Yes, I grieved. But what, really, could be sad about?