A Tribute To Sally

November 7, 1981.

I had just turned 12. My dad's brother found a lone female beagle on the banks of the Floodway ditches just outside of Kennett, MO, where we lived. There had been a truck at the parking area calling for a dog when he had pulled up, but he didn't give it much thought. When he returned to his vehicle a couple hours later, she was curled up where the truck had been. She lay

in a tight ball, with her tail tucked tightly between her legs. It was obvious she was used to being beaten.

My uncle brought her to our house and gave her to Dad. It took months for her to accept the fact we would only love her and not abuse her. He said he remembered the men calling for "Sally", so we kept the moniker since she was older and wouldn't have to relearn her name. We finally took her out to see what she'd do on the side of an old railroad bed. She methodically worked her way through the briars and weeds until she came across the scent of a rabbit, letting it know it was on its trail with short, choppy barks. She worked the rabbit slowly, but she followed every twist and turn as it tried in vain to shake her.

A year or so later, Dad answered an ad in the local newspaper about a male beagle for sale. He called and arranged a time to meet the owner on a ditch dump to see if it would run a rabbit. The dog performed adequately, but another gentleman was there too who had called about him. A coin flip decided who would be able to buy the dog. I still remember that silver nickel being launched into the air, and Dad saying "tales." Jack joined Sally at our home, giving voice to the chase.

His throaty bawl perfectly complimented Sally's choppy bark, and it was music to a young boy's heart. Almost every Saturday in the fall growing up, Dad and I would trudge along some overgrown ditch dump or walk miles and miles of the railroad beds that cut across the Missouri bootheel. Jack would often overrun the spot where a rabbit had made a twisting turn or backtracked in an attempt to elude the dogs, but Sally would come plodding along and methodically sort out the convoluted trail.

I can count on one hand the number of rabbits that were able to fool Sally. It usually took one having to make it to a cotton field before we got a shot, running between the cotton stalks for hundreds of yards without brushing against anything, and then doubling back before making all kinds of crazy turns in the field. It takes a darn good dog to bring a rabbit out of a cotton field and back into the thick brush, and Sally lost very few.

She would run rabbits again and again past me, as they made their circles. In the beginning, I missed a lot. But one of the best things Dad did was start me off on his old single-shot 16 gauge. It taught me remarkable marksmanship at a very early age at running game. Later, my parents bought me a pump-action Remington 870, though I rarely needed the multiple shots it afforded me.

Sally and Jack were incredible companions growing up, and Sally may have been the single-best rabbit dog alive at the time, if you asked me. Her ability to simply not lose rabbits was invaluable to a fledgling hunter, and the success which eventually started coming with more regularity paved the way for a lifetime of yearning to be outdoors and to enjoy what God has provided for us.