My daddy was a serious dogman. When he got out of the army after the First World War, he bought some surplus German shepherds, trained them to obey commands in English, and resold them. Business was good into the 1920s, when the enormous fame of one of the world’s first dog movie stars, Rin Tin Tin, vaulted the breed to the most popular in America. In the thirties, he got the bird-dog bug, buying, training, hunting with, selling, and competing in field trials with dozens of English pointers and setters. Among the few tangible items he left behind when he died at ninety was a box of pedigrees, prize ribbons, and sepia photos of dogs on point in the field. His two all-time favorites were a patrician pointer, Jake, and a common
