The Nearly Dog.
I have never had a lot of luck with scanners but recently a new one was acquired and it offered me an opportunity to put a lot more photos on to my P.C. One was a picture of Cher, a small but perfectly formed Pointer bitch, owned by my friend Shaun McCormack and bred by my wife. She was a litter sister of my Roi dog and was to all intents and purposes an imported dog as although bred here in Northern Ireland her mother was from Rome and her father was from Brazil. I can’t remember much about Cher’s puppyhood other than how she got her name. She used to howl as a pup and at the oddest time, just after she had been fed. She would lick her front paws and chest and sit down, throw back her head and let rip and she had the deepest howl, like a dog five times her size. Her slim figure, deep voice, and glossy black coat led to her being christened Cher, after the singer.
Boris, her litter brother, was sold to Shaun’s wife and Cher to Roy Heath. Neither got on really well so at some stage they were swapped over. If my memory is correct Cher was about nine months old when she arrived in Huddersfield and was pointing game in general and had had a few trips to the hill and pointed a few grouse.
Some people and or dogs are haunted by various verbal comments. Cher’s is
“Didn’t have the running”.
Her first award was the Scottish F.T.A.’s Novice Summer Trial in 1993 where she was given a Second Place award and was the only dog in the awards. And all this from an A Panel judge who doesn’t give C.O.M.’s if he can’t give a first. Shaun’s comment was that a dog has difficulty running if it’s pointing and she had several points that day.
Her next award was one of two C.O.M.’s given at the same Club’s Spring Novice Trial the next year at Kinbrace. Margaret Ward took a video of most of that trial and Cher had a great run and a find in the first round but went off the rails in the second and wouldn’t handle. I had thought her lucky to get a C.O.M.
Next year Shaun brought her over for the N.I.Pointer Club’s Autumn Trials. The Picture above is the two of us about to cast off in the first round. Cher beat Roi to birds and ended up second to Jimmy Dalton’s Lagopus Netty and again “ Didn’t have the running that the winner did.” was bandied about but this time was a fair comment.
Cher stayed on with me that winter and I ran her in a pheasant stake at Glarryford, just about the best pheasant stake ground in the whole British Isles. We got nothing and were harshly judged. Cher came into season a fortnight later and that explains her outstanding performance in the first round. We had a find on a snipe in the middle of a big flat in the bog, which she absolutely tore to shreds. In the second round, on ground adjacent to the same piece of ground she came on point outside a large clump of bull rushes. When asked to produce she went round the side to gain easy access and the cock pheasant flushed. It was touch and go if she got in front of the bird but she produced it and dropped to the flush but was thrown out all the same. Bad judging in my book.
I ran her in a few other pheasant trials with no birds available to us and then Shaun came over to run her in an I.K.C. trial in Co Monaghan that used to be the last trial in the calendar either North or South. She had a successful find on a snipe and got through to the run off where she found a white cock pheasant which she was staunch to until her bracemate ran past her taking Cher and the pheasant, literally into another country. Very, very bad luck.
I used to holiday in England fairly regularly and in 1996 the wife and I took the flat above the Ice Cream Shop in Reeth for a fortnight and I could go to the trials while my sons swam in the river. For a whole week the meets were just about outside my front door. One morning I took Cher out early to train on Reeth Moor, a place the keeper told me probably hadn’t had a pointer on it in over a hundred years. Before breakfast Cher had twenty three, yes!, twenty three finds on various numbers of grouse. I remember one particularly well. She was returning from a long cast and came over a rise and was going to run between two sheep that were grazing looking towards me, with their backs to Cher. She stopped and assumed a pointing stance and I thought she was backing the stationary sheep. Not a bit of it. As Paul and I approached the sheep ran off but Cher remained on point. The sheep had been only about five feet apart but in between were two young birds, probably from a covey flushed earlier. Later that day we took part in the Gordon Setter Club’s Open Stake at Reeth. She was in the zone. She had seven finds in the body of the stake. I remember her last run against my good friend Alan Neill. As we walked forward to cast off the senior judge said “ Alan, you need birds, and Des, you need running.” Cher beat Alan’s dog to game twice before he managed the find he needed. Cher was second, only because she “Hadn’t had enough running!”
Cher was also “nearly” a mother as well. She produced a litter of eight, four black, four orange, self-coloured, and all dead. This was a great shame as I always felt Cher had a lot to offer as a mother but you can only play the hand you are dealt.
Cher was nearly a lot of things but she was definitely one of the best mannered, best natured, and most natural pointers I have ever known or handled. She was also a character in the house worming her way onto countless people’s laps and snoring like a pig when lying on her back. My current black bitch, Bess is a lot like Cher in manner but has a totally different head. She had one failing, she never backed in her life although the picture below suggests otherwise. She was a smashing wee dog and I wish I had a kennel full of her clones.
