The third mating for Roi was Lagopus Queen and it produced this bundle of fun, christened Freckles, I am sure you can work out why. In fact it produced a few bundles for fun.Junny Dalton and I split the litter with Freckles going to Michael Houston, I took Gus and Angie went to Shaun. Having secured the future I relaxed and as is often the case things started to fall apart. That summer Shaun was walking down a steep slope, fell and broke Angie’s leg. It didn’t heal properly and she had to be put to sleep. Then mother nature served up a biggy. Gus, who was over with Shaun for a while died of Bloat, on Christmas Day! As luck would have it Michael was prepared to swap Freckles for another pup and Shaun had a replacement. Freckles had been used for rough shooting with the emphasis on rough. Freckles didn’t do handling but boy could she find birds. I don’t think Shaun ever ran her in competition but Freckles turned in to a golden dog. She was the goose that for so many years laid the golden egg. Access to grouse moors. Freckles was THE counting dog, bar none. Although like a barrel with a leg at each corner she could go like stink, and her drive was amazing. As I said before she didn’t do handling but she was so good a pinning birds that you were given every opportunity to see exactly what she produced and work out if it was to be included in the count.. The photo below is a typical find, the red dot being where the bird was. The photo above was taken on another typical Freckles day. It was a count for a soon to be retired keeper. If proved to be a huge count and it was a record for the keeper’s twenty eight year tenure. Freckles is sorely missed but I have her daughter, the pocket pointer, Judy, Exile on Main Street………..and her granddaughter Bess,…….and her great grandaughter Gina.
(Life can be hard some times. Having decided to reduce the number of bitches in the kennel I sold Bess. And the weekend end after Bess left Gina disappeared is strange circumstances, presumed stolen. Feb 2009. )
For all that she was a freestyle dog Freckles was amazingly staunch. See the wall in the top left hand corner. My car was over the wall. After she pointed I walked to the car, got the camera out of the boot, walked back and took the picture.
