The Birdy things in life

Few things can stir me like pheasant hunting. There are a select few experiences that can compare to that of a flushing rooster. Maybe the feeling of bungee jumping, sky diving, or hitting the slope of a black diamond. A cackling rooster at the nose of a well trained dog is the original extreme sport. An adrenalin dump that no artificial drug could replicate. The greatest gift to us hunters is the feeling of your first flush, its almost indescribable. The greatest part of this gift? We can receive it every time afield, and its just as exciting as the last. Following a dog that you trained and you put on the ground can be the very definition of euphoria. From the first aroma of puppy breath that you can't seem to get enough of, to the utter disgust you feel from a missed opportunity. A missed opportunity brought upon yourself by you, and your own short comings as a trainer. It's almost comical how a dog can run your life or make or break your day. You can spend a entire hunting trip "training your dog" and when the sun sets, you know where you end up? Right where they wanted to put you. No not for a split second could our highly evolved and superior brains even entertain the notion of us being trained. It's a ridicules thought, a human being conditioned to go here or there to find birds. If you ever have a spare second in that brain of yours,(I have millions of them) stop and think how you learned what type of grass looks "Birdy". Did you just know it? Did a cricket in your pocket yell "hey dumb-ass over there"? Probably not. Odds are your dog found a bird in a similar slice of ground and you learned there could be a bird in there. I'd be willing to bet that is "conditioning" at its highest degree. No matter how you sling it, a bird dog is a hunter, a comrade, a best friend, and most of all a loved one.