I don't know whether the trials have gotten less crazy since then. I sure hope not. All I know about top-notch bird dogs is, you're not supposed to pet them much; they're more serious than that. All I can say about myself as a horseman is, I guess I am just not gaited. Yet in February I risked—for the third time—being trampled under several hundred hooves and Garth Brooks hats to ride behind elite dogs (Quicksilver Pink, Willie Freedom, Red-Necked Woman, Reedy Fork Reb, Miller's Crossbow, and Chinquapin Bisco Buck) as they competed in the National Field Trial Championships at the Ames Plantation in Grand Junction, Tennessee. I rode to the bird dogs partly because no American boy wants to pass up a chance to die with his boots on, so to speak. But mostly I did it for the figures of speech. The first time I attended the field trials was in 1979, at the invitation of my old college friend Ruff Fant. Ruff grew up in Holly Springs, Mississippi, which is just over the state line from the Ames Plantation.
