This is a day that we knew was coming soon, and sadly I had spent her last three days trying to dig a grave in the hard Oklahoma ground in preparation for the inevitable. I worked in one hundred degree weather, chipping away at the rocky ground with a pick axe, watching the sweat from my brow and the tears from my eyes spill onto the hard ground. Often, my knees buckled as I toiled to prepare her final resting place. She’s been such a big part of Shiloh Ranch. We just can’t believe she’s gone. Everything we say, and everything we do reminds us of her. She was always here to greet us when we walked in the door, and was always the first thing we saw when we woke up. The whole house seems so empty now. If anybody has any pictures or video of Sage, we sure would enjoy seeing them. Unfortunately when our computer crashed earlier this year, we lost all of the old photos and videos we had of her. I didn’t realize how important those pictures would be during this time.
I will write more about our little wonder dog later, after I regain my composure. I sure do miss our bestest little friend :(
I never had the pleasure of meeting her, but I sure felt like I knew her.
Hold the memories close, the hurt will fade with time.
I enjoyed reading about Sage's Exploits over the years
Greg Eastman
I hate seeing ANY animal suffer and strive to make the most humane shot I can on animals I kill.
Having said this, it is hard to believe how much one can love a dog.
I raised two beagle pups from 6 weeks old. They were sisters. Two of the best beagles I ever saw. We treated them like family.
11 years of pure joy and LOADS of rabbits.
GREAT pets.
Lightning led me to my biggest bow killed deer ever after I had almost given up. (a 170 inch gross non-typical)
A couple years ago, some neighbor dogs pinned Lightning down and killed her.
My family and I were devastated.
Her sister, Dottie, literally refused to eat and died laying beside her pen within 2 weeks.
It was heart breaking.
I am very sorry for your loss. It will take time to heal.
so sorry she's gone
On the plus side, Sage saved and found so many hogs for hunters over the years.
I smile as I remember how excited she got when she came into camp and caught the scent of hogs taken. Or hearing her bell tinkling through the woods as she worked through a bloodtrail.
Fond memories of that little trooper.
Your story reminds me of when I lost my first dog, Doc. A constant and loyal companion, he died on my son's 6th birthday. While he and his buddies went to a bowling alley for his party, I stayed home and dug Doc's grave in the hard dry clay accordant to a Virginia July. I dug for hours by hand. You know the silly part? I am a man who owns excavators and backhoes. But I couldn't bear the thought of not digging that grave by hand.
Eventual sorrow is always the price we pay for love, Cheryl. God gives us nothing for free, as you know.
You also know he sends down these furry angels and trusts us to do right by some of the best gifts he's given to mankind.
Well done, Cheryl and Matt, you gave a great dog the best home possible. We all know, Sage danged sure knew it and so does God. You're probably why he placed Sage where he did.
This photo is from Marc Murrell, he very graciously has loaned it to me if I want to do a story on tracking dogs, which I will eventually.
Can't say I know how you feel because I'm not you, and Sage wasn't my partner. (You no more owned Sage than Matt owns you and V/V.) But I promise you smiles will come when you realize how fortunate you were, and how fortunate Sage was, too.
Take care. I'm afraid you'll be sending me a similar e-mail within a few months.
On the positive, Cheryl, at least we know there will be NO bluegill in the swimming pools in Heaven and Lord help those angels if a rat runs through choir practice! :-)
Will Rogers
So sorry for your loss.
GOd bless and stay well !
Matt Dowse
A week later I noticed that she was not feeling well, but was not too concerned. She did not get better and was losing weight. I took her to the Vet and she was diagnosed with Dysautonomia (sp), a very rare and nearly 100% fatal bacterial infection. The vet prescribed antibiotics and antinausea medicine, but told me their was virtually no chance she would survive. I am not ashamed to admit that I shed a lot of tears the next few days. She lasted about another week and I her buried next to a German Shorthair that my brother had lost too soon to cancer a few years before.
During Lady's last days I had a lot of thoughts and came to the conclusion that the best thing to do was get another hunting dog. I found a litter of Brittanys that were reasonably priced and ready for their new home.
In late February Abby came to train me as her new servant. She will never replace Ladybug in my heart, but she has certainly found a very large place of her own there. She became a very good bird dog by the end of the 2013-14 bird season and even more importantly she is a great family member. She wants to do nothing but please me.
My long winded point is that many of us are dog people and we should always have a dog in our lives, knowing that we will probably outlive them.
Out of the hundreds, if not thousands of tracking jobs she went on for us, the one that stands out the most is the time she found the hog that we didn't know was shot.
We were called out to stand three one night to track a hog that one of our hunters had shot earlier in the evening. He described it as a big, black and white boar. We found a little bit of blood and put Sage out on the track. We went uphill behind the ladder stand, across the road and then the chase was one. She jumped the hog and Sage took off after it in hot pursuit. The race lasted about a half hour and when we eventually lost both Sage and the hog. We drove around the ranch frantically trying to find them, when suddenly we heard her bayed up back behind stand seven. Matt walked in and quickly dispatched the hog. He then called me on the radio to let me know he had both Sage and the hog. When we pulled up to load the hog, it turned out it was a medium sized, red sow. The hunter said that wasn't his hog at all, despite the fresh broadhead wound in it's side. We were disappointed, and even more so discouraged to think that someone else shot a hog and didn't tell us. We took Sage back to stand #3 and put her back down on the blood trail. She followed the trail back up the hill and across the road again, just like the first time, only this time after crossing the road she turned right, towards stand #2. We tracked about a third of a mile when all of a sudden Sage starts barking again (which she only did when we found a wounded hog that was still alive). As we approached the brush pile, a big black and white boar jumped up. This time, it was the hog that the hunter had shot, and we were able to dispatch it for him. Well, when we got back to camp and started questioning folks about the red sow that had been shot, one of the guys told us that there was a sow just like that one that came in to stand #3 the same time as the black and white boar (he was videotaping the hunter that shot the black and white boar). We reviewed the video tape of the shot and lo and behold, there was the red sow standing directly behind the black and white boar. The hunter never even knew that he shot through one hog and into another. Sage was able to discern between the two trails and helped us recover both wounded animals.
I could go on and on with stories like this. She was truly that once in a lifetime companion.
One of Sage's many nicknames was Tenacious T. She was a terrier through and through. There was no calling her off a track, so we had to start qualifying which hogs we would turn her out on. I remember chasing one hog for many hours until we finally wore it out. Sage, Matt and I were all as wore out as the hog too. When we finally dispatched the hog, we found that the hunters "perfect shot" barely nicked the hogs lower leg. That was one of the few hogs that refused to stop, but Sage stuck with it to the end.
Here's a recent picture of her right before she went into renal failure. We never taught her to share with others, so didn't want Daddy to take the squirrel away.
NDvideographer's Link
I know how close a pet can become they truly become part of the family!
Prayers and thoughts for a peaceful heart soon!!!!
Come on Cheryl, you had all those years, all those hunts..
MORE!
Matt and I have both owned and trained many dogs in our lives, and Sage truly is that once in a lifetime companion that didn't need to be told what to do. I was certain she could read my mind most of the time, and had such a strong desire to please us that rarely was a correction needed. I had one German Wirehair Pointer that needed an e-collar for a correction to even register in his brain, but Sage on the other hand never needed anything more than a stern word. For such a gritty dog, she was very soft hearted.
I remember her going through that puppy stage where she would lose interest in a track after about 50 yards. The first time she did that was while tracking a doe that I had shot which didn't bleed much. I thought it was a perfect training opportunity for her so I brought her out and put her on the trail. She picked up on it quickly and with her nose to the ground started off in the direction the deer ran. Everything was going good until a squirrel caught her attention. She snapped her head up and forgot all about the deer. It was quite warm and I was worried about losing the meat from my doe, so decided to just tie Sage off to a small tree and continue tracking the deer by sight myself. Well, she sure did not like that one bit! As soon as I got out of sight of Sage, she went nuts and started barking and crying in the distance. The next thing I knew, that little pup tore out of her collar and went zipping right past me and directly to the deer! That turned out to be the most effective training method we could use on her. We used it one more time when she took off after a nest of piglets we busted, and never needed another correction while tracking after that.
Her desire to please us was beyond that of any other dog (or human) we've ever known. Even though jagdterriers aren't known to be retreivers, she just picked up on it herself. Whenever we shot wounded hogs, she would just dive in on them and start tearing them up, so when she was with us and we shot birds over her I think it was just in her to run over and grab them. Surprisingly she was soft mouthed with them, but I think that's only because she didn't like getting the feathers all over her mouth. She would spit them out and paw at her mouth until they were all cleaned out. I just love this picture of her retrieving a goose for us. She really had to work to push that big thing all the way to shore for us. We stuck to ducks and dove after this one though. I truly believe she would have drowned herself trying to please us.
Was she your only hunting dog when you got her?
We tried training another jagdterrier to track in case something ever happened to Sage, but we didn't have Chigger but a year or so before she decided to try and kill Sage one night. We sold Chigger to a Government Trapper the next day.
From that day on we vowed to never bring another dog anywhere near her house as long as she lived here. I am convinced that the deep,personal bond between a tracking dog and it's handler is part of what makes a great dog truly shine (not giving any credit to the handler, so much as to the dog).
Happy, hard-working people, happy hard-working dog.
Sage probably came along at what was already the happiest time of your life, and thrived on your excitement.
I remember the Chigger chronicles.
Let me know how your search for another, not a replacement, goes. I'm hoping some people in Kansas will now start looking into tracking dogs since it's not legal for recovering big game.
That is so true Mike, and in fact the saddest times of both our lives were the days that we had to leave Sage home while we went to camp without her. Seeing her lying on the back of the couch, looking out the window as we pulled away often made us cry. That little booger didn't know how much of an attachment she had to our heart strings!
I was so happy to hear of Kansas' new law, and in fact had read it on the United Blood Trackers Facebook just as it was announced. That is a good resource for folks wanting to find information on training, breeds, etc.
If you all will indulge me one last time, I found another photo that reminded me of another fun tracking job. Again, this was late at night and the hunter had given up on finding his hog when he enlisted Sage to come help. We put her down on the few drops of visible blood and she was off to the races! We ran that hog for well over an hour before it finally stopped to fight Sage. As we approached in the dark, we heard the disheartening sound as Sage took off after it again. The hog wasn't hit bad enough to even slow it down. So off we went again...Sage, Matt, the hunter and myself all running as fast as we could up and down muddy creek banks, through greenbriars and finally on top of a hill where we could barely make out the muffled sound of Sage barking. We kept walking in circles trying to determine what direction she was from us, and we just couldn't pinpoint her location. Finally, as we all started walking west, we could hear her getting louder. Suddenly, we were standing on the edge of a big crevice, that led into a big cave where Sage had the hog bayed up.
We were all standing about 12 feet up above Sage, and the sides of the gulch were straight up and down. It was a very narrow gulch, and we couldn't even see the hog up in the cave, but we knew it was there because Sage said so. We all tried shining our spotlights up in the opening but the best we could see were the front feet of the big boar. Finally, it made a few mock charges out at Sage before retreating back into the cave. Finally, Matt just went ahead and tried for a low neck shot when it stepped out just far enough to be visible. Well, things didn't go as planned, and the hog wasn't planning on dying that night. Unfortunately, we didn't have any ammo left. Matt never had to take a second shot but this hog wasted both bullets we had, so Matt sent me home to get more. Now those of you whom have ever spent any time tracking with me in the woods at night will know that I just don't have an internal compass in my body. I get lost if I take two steps off the trail. When Matt sent me home to get ammo, he didn't realize it was going to take me an hour just to find the four-wheeler! It was probably closer to two hours when I finally returned with more bullets, and Sage was still holding the hog at bay in the narrow cave. This time Matt decided to take his chances and slide down into the narrow crevice. His shoulders nearly touched both sides of the gulch, and the only way back up was to pretty much fly straight up. There simply were no footholds or anything else to facilitate getting up out of that gulch, so this one shot was really going to have to count. As I shined my spotlight from above, Matt leveled down on the hogs head, which was just a few inches above Sage. As he shot, the boar lunged forward and Sage did the same. As the two met, the hog's body suddenly slammed to a stop with such force that blood sprayed all over Matt, and then the hog bounced backwards before coming to a stop. We all couldn't believe our eyes as we looked at the dead hog laying just a few inches from Matt. When I climbed down to help pull it out we realized that buried under the dead leaves in that gulch was a 4" tree root that went from one side of the gulch to the other. That root is the only thing that kept Matt from being run over by the boar. We always let Sage think that she stopped that boar and told her how she saved Daddy's life! Anyways, it was an exciting night and here's a picture after we loaded up to head back to camp with the trophy.
Funny thing, Cheryl, is that it hasn't changed a bit in all of those years.
You don't fish much, do you? :-)
Pretty sure I'm speaking for all dog lovers when I say we love reading them.
I'll write more later. We've been diggin through a bunch of old film photos trying to find some more pictures.
We welcomed him in the family when my son was 11 and there was nothing he loved more that pleasing us and hunting.
When we would leave him alone at home, He would get one sandal from each family member and bring it to his kennel and sleep on top of them. When we returned home, we would have to go digging for them in his kennel.
son was 12 in the pic. He is 25 now.
To everyone who has lost a beloved companion, I'm truly sorry as we know what you're going through. We miss our little buddy so much.
Here's another picture of Sage at the end of one of many of her track jobs.
Never easy to lose a 4 legged family member.
My best, Paul
