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November 17, 2012

bird dog

From our Word of the Day feed

bird dog noun
1. one of any of various breeds of dogs trained to hunt or retrieve birds.
2. Informal . a person hired to locate special items or people, especially a talent scout who seeks out promising athletes.
3. Slang . a person who steals another person's date.


My pop used to raise bird dogs, even taking them to trials and winning trophies. I've got some old home movies around here of the last hunting dog he owned, along with her litter of puppies but I haven't transferred any of them to digital yet. (I'm sure my home movies would really drive up the traffic to this blog!)

I've never known a person who fit the second definition and heaven knows I was never a good enough athlete to be bird-dogged.

I AM familiar with the slang term, though, because I was a bird dog when I met my ex-wife for the first time. Some home town boys brought their dates by my house and my roommate and I got the boys drunk and after they passed out we moved in on their women. Looking back, we shouldn't have done it...not because it was a despicable thing to do (all's fair in love and war, after all) but because neither my or my roomie's relationship with the girls turned out well. Oh well.

When I first saw the word in the widget module for today, the first thing I thought of was this old tune. It came out a long time before this concert, but it was the best YouTube had to offer.

Bird Dog - Everly Brothers (live 1983)



3 comments:

Barb said...

Great song ♥ Our yellow lab Hazel is a bird dog. Most labs are used for waterfowl but my uncle trained her for game birds, which up here is pheasant and woodcock. She's really great at it and loves it so much. Her whole demeanor changes when ever anyone takes out a gun or she hears gunshot. It's tough on her this time of year because it's deer season. She hears the shots and gets all jazzed up. But we have to be careful about letting her out to run the property as much because she might get shot.

Mike said...

We're literally right at the southern edge of prime pheasant country.

When my dad would get ready for hunting, his dogs would somehow know it, maybe was the smell of gun oil or how he was dressed or his demeanor, but they'd roll over on their backs w/ their paws in the air, waiting for him to put on their little hunting booties.

I love labs, they're a great combination of a family/guard/hunting dog. Great disposition. A friend of mine had a black one and taught it to catch a Frisbee.

I was at his house one day when a mutual friend came by with her baby - the kid was at the age where it was really starting to crawl and get into things and the baby found one of the dog's Frisbees. The dog didn't like that at all and the mother took the disc away from her child. I don't think the dog would have bitten the kid, but it was upset. So was the kid after getting his new-found toy taken away.

About ten minutes later, the kid has disappeared back into the other room and the mom had just noticed and started to get up. About that time, the dog came through the door backwards, its mouth with a firm grip on the kid's diaper, dragging the baby back into the living room. It had fetched the kid!

Mike said...

has=had