by Erin Kalpin
I was 12 years old, sitting in my bedroom nestled at the back of the small home I was growing up in. There, I touched the golden wings on the ruffed grouse pin before placing it on my blaze orange Ruffed Grouse Society hat. The following day I’d be heading to a North American Versatile Hunting Dog Association (NAVHDA) test, where we’d be running the small 7-month-old puppy I claimed as my own, named Ben, in his Natural Ability test.
During the test, I proudly stood next to my dad when we reached the water and we paused for a photo. At the end of the day, Ben didn’t receive a prize, and I cried as soon as we got in the truck to head home. However, dad later retested him and he passed, reassuring me my dog was still a good dog and he wasn’t the disappointment he’d revealed himself to be earlier.
It was behind that dog that I went on my first solo grouse hunt later that fall, retracing the steps I knew so well after following dad around for the previous few years. I was coming up to the spot where there was always a bird. Sure enough, Ben pointed faithfully, and I walked in to make my flush. Before long, I stood in front of my dog and saw the little brown bird with beady black eyes staring at me. With my single-barreled shotgun tight in my grip, I flushed the woodcock and watched it fly away. That was the day Ben found his disappointment in his 12-year-old handler.
This was hardly the start of what burned a passion for dogs and hunting into my heart. I was just two when dad bought his first pudelpointer, and I vividly remember every NAVHDA test we took that dog to, and the many other dogs and NAVHDA tests that followed. Soon enough, dad would have me running dogs in their Natural Ability tests, and eventually, Utility tests. That was no problem in the eyes of NAVHDA. I remember judges like Terry Petro and Joe Dolejsi speaking kindly and excitedly to me when I was a youth handler. Other handlers would ask me if I was nervous. I’d look them straight in the eyes and simply say “No.” Because I wasn’t — that’s the beauty behind youth handlers.
Besides running dogs in tests as a kid, the memories burned deep in my mind of those NAVHDA days were things like watching Bill Jensen sitting in his lawn chair entertaining the gallery of handlers who were waiting for their turns to run their dogs, and memories of sitting around the campfire at night listening to the adults talking about dogs here and dogs past. It was the array of beards, from gray and smooth to twisted and rough. It was the variety of versatile gun dogs I got to pet and marvel over.
As I grew up and left for the college, I couldn’t help but feel sad, left to wonder if I’d ever attend a NAVHDA test again. I doubted I’d witness adults gathering around for stories at the end of a long day of testing. I doubted I’d feel the tug of a leather leash in my palm on test day, or the way the judges grabbed me by the shoulder after results were read, shaking my entire being while they smiled and said congrats.
One day I was digging through a plastic bin packed with things from childhood. I pulled out a small envelope addressed to me at my home where I grew up. In the top left corner was the name Marilyn Vetter. I opened it up and the small, handwritten card with her condolences sat in my hands. When I was 16, our first female pudelpointer had passed away and I’d written an article for NAVHDA’s magazine, Versatile Hunting Dog. I told Sage’s story and how she was the dog I shot my first woodcock over. When I was a kid, NAVHDA’s then president left an obvious impression on me. The fact that I still held on to the card was proof enough.
Soon after this, I quit my full-time job to train dogs again with my dad. Together, we’ve run a good number of Natural Ability and Utility dogs — even qualifying more than a half dozen for the Invitational, which has brought us to places from Iowa to New Mexico. Some of the most memorable tests have been those where we ran some pups in a classic Minnesota spring blizzard, or when we qualified three dogs in one day with prize 1 UT scores. Training dogs again fulfilled the part of life that had felt missing during my years away. It felt good to come back to NAVHDA and see so many familiar faces. Several members encouraging me to pursue my commitment to these dogs by becoming a NAVHDA judge. The stories, relationships and extra memories I’ve had with my dad are consequential.
It feels momentous to say I’ve seen my time with NAVHDA start to come full circle. As I write this, I’ve just wrapped up my apprenticing requirements and will apply to become a NAVHDA judge. Not everyone I enjoyed associating with in my childhood days with NAVHDA is still around — some of them have passed. But most of them are here, like familiar lights that helped spark my love for dogs.
The impact we have on our young people is overwhelming. It doesn’t take much more than a memorable beard, the way you tell stories and laugh with one another or the simple act of writing a letter. Our youth look up to us and take a liking to adults who make them feel included in any way, big or small. Not all kids will find themselves burning with passion to train and test dogs into their adult lives. Not all of them will march through grouse covers for the rest of their years. But there will be one. At least one.
