I have an 8 year old Half Lab Half Chesapeake.

Some years we raise pheasants and put them out on the ranch here and of course some get away and have settled in nicely to the area. Not my place, though. They flee the home of their birth and settle into the sections bordering us.

These emigrant pheasants would be the ones not shot or correspondingly not eaten by my dog. He loves the taste of freshly-shot pheasant, particularly the ones he has flushed himself. Part of the reason I try to keep in shape is so I can get to the downed birds just after he finds them. Even a short period of time between his locating the birds and my arrival makes for little to bring home and really, it's nice to have something to bring home after all that walking and shooting.

Aside from the scars all over his face from fights, the small knot of scar tissue on his neck and the destroyed eye duct caused by a bigger dog during one of his youthful indiscetions, an injury that causes the continuous drainage and buildup of a pusslike secretion that looks not unlike a soup dumpling clinging to the bridge of his nose, he is a fine looking dog. That is, except for the big roll of fat that pushes his collar up and the limp he has from a shoulder injury that just won't heal.

He loves people, except for those that come on the place that he doesn't know. He hates dogs except for his fellow compadres that live with him here. He loves them. Actually, love might be the wrong word. I think "hate" might be more appropriate.

Love is more appropriate a word when describing what he thinks about food. Both eating it and of course just standing over it for hours on end showing off to his stable mates.

He is a good dog. He thinks the world of us and we think the world of him.