New Recognition Available To All Great Hunting Dogs

by H. James Hildebrandt, as featured in the July/August issue of: 

What’s the highest honor a hunting dog can attain?  Some will tell you it’s an alphabet soup of letters before and after the dog’s registered name. Others might claim that a hunting dog doesn’t truly achieve greatness until its offspring and their offspring show wonderful attributes of inherited genetics. For still others a dog must compete and win in organized, certified tests at natural and trained skills.

These are certainly all admirable standards and honors, but each is largely determined as much by the dog owner’s dedication to the “doggy lifestyle.” The only dogs ever given a shot at these traditional kinds of recognition are owned by people who spend limitless hours and money training, competing and campaigning the dog. And as much as many would like to deny it, even “political clout” in the dog world can frequently come into play. On top of that, serious breeders sometimes devote their entire lifetimes to the development of superior lines and superior dogs.

Isn’t it possible that average owners can own great dogs? Might not there be hunting dogs worthy of all those fancy postgraduate degrees that spend their nights snuggled in bed with the kids instead of in a dog truck somewhere out on the field trial circuit?

What’s the highest honor an honest-to-goodness hunting dog can attain? That’s easy! A special place in its owner’s heart. Pleasing its owner in the field and at home is the measure of simple success.

Golds Pineview Sadie, a German Shorthair Pointer owned and loved by Mike Goldsmith of Metamora, Illinois is exactly the kind of dog Brown was thinking about in founding the IHDHoF. Sadie was whelped in 1991 and served her master faithfully and joyfully for the better part of nine years.

Sadie was crazy for pheasants, and on the application for induction, Mike wrote, “She was a hardworking dog with a great nose and a willingness to please… an excellent hunting dog and companion. She was always very obedient with lots of stamina and worked close. She never quit or gave up to her dying day in December 1999.” Were that not enough to qualify her for the Hall of Fame, Sadie proved herself in competition as well, taking a second and a couple of fourths at local pheasant and quail hunting events running against 30-40 other dogs each time.