Jude
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events are either fictional or fictionalized.
When it came to bird dogs, my ol’ man was a pussycat.
Three-legged? We’d take ‘em. Blind in one eye? Not a problem. Untrainable? No such thing. Aggressive? Great. The more the better. Old?
We’d find a spot in the kennel. Part beagle, part Brittney? Sure, why the hell not. Gun shy? That’s where the ol’ man drew the line. There weren’t no cure for that.
The ol’ man believed that inside every field dog, no matter how ornery, maltreated, misused or crossbred, a great hunter instinct lurked. It was just a matter of coaxing that instinct to the surface through patience, persistence and the occasional boot in the rear end. He applied the same method to his children, a passel that came in all manner of sizes and temperaments.
Spread across a decade and a half, there was the brainy middle child, the obedient oldest son, the truant, the rebellious daughter, Irish twins, the bubbly cheerleader and, then, there was me, the youngest, an oops baby and a clumsy misfit in a family stacked with athletic, good-looking, popular kids.
Long before I was born, my mother had gladly donated a closet-full of children’s hand-me-downs to the Women’s Auxiliary annual clothes drive, in the fervent belief her child-rearing days were well behind her.
As for the ol’ man, he addressed me as “you” for the longest time and eyed me warily as one would a troublesome house guest.
The family had already relocated several times before I arrived, each new home carefully selected to accommodate the growing brood but, just as importantly, the ol’ man’s expanding kennel operations.
The ol’ man not only raised and trained his own bird dogs, but those of neighbors, friends, transplanted city folk and large landowners, who he stalked like big game, always with an eye on bagging more hunting territory.
“Give Cody to Gus,” bird hunters would advise friends with unruly hounds. “He’ll cure what ails your dog.”
And the ol’ man did, too, always. That is, until Judy came along, a one-and-a-half-year-old, aristocratic-looking Irish wolfhound with a black coat as dense as steel wool, a head the size of a car battery and a long, ropey tail upturned at the end like a giant fishhook.
Bred for power and endurance, Judy had a gallop that could chew up 10 yards at a clip and top out at 35 miles per hour. She tipped the scales at 120 pounds and could wrestle a full-grown sow to the ground and cradle a spike horn in her powerful jaws.
On all fours, she stood as high as a kitchen counter and could look a Shetland pony squarely in the eye. She stretched to well over six feet on her hind legs and towered above most people. But her size belied her disposition. Mostly, she was gentle as a kitten.
That’s not to say Judy didn’t have her faults. She did, a list a mile long. She was known to raid chicken coops and rabbit cages and she dug holes in the yard that would bring a smile to an undertaker’s lips. She would howl for the better part of an afternoon if a car backfired and, worse still, she chased game. If the ol’ man, instead of Moses, had stumbled off that mountaintop with stone tablets in hand, you can bet the First Commandment would have read: “Bird Dogs Shall Not Run Deer.”
Despite her well-known flaws, we made room in the kennels for Judy. The ol’ man’s hunting buddies snickered and shook their heads in disbelief when they heard the news but he was always quick to defend his decision by pointing out that wolfhounds officially were classified a sporting breed.
Admittedly it was an eccentric choice, even by the ol’ man’s standards, but, like I mentioned in the beginning, he had a soft spot in his heart for wayward dogs. Besides, the farmer who owned Judy had, for several years, given the ol’ man permission to hunt his land on opening day, and he felt obliged to try to repay the favor.
Judy showed up at our place in the summertime with the promise she’d be ready for the upcoming fall hunting season. The ol’ man waived his normal fee and, in a decision he soon regretted. Judy ate more than all the other dogs in the kennel combined and it fell to me to make weekly rounds to the butcher shop, meatpacker and local IGA to beg for scraps to keep the dog from driving the family into the poorhouse.
The first hint the ol’ man got that Judy represented a unique set of challenges came shortly after her arrival when he took the dog to the field out behind our house to gauge her obedience.
Judy’s breeder had assured the farmer the dog had been trained to heel and whoa on command. That was true, much like it’s true that a stopped clock is accurate twice a day.
The ol’ man fashioned a dog collar out of one of his old leather belts – the girth of Judy’s neck too big for a store-bought one -- and attached a 12-foot lead and paraded the dog around in ever-expanding circles as she heeled obediently at his side, glancing up at him with dark, expressive eyes whenever he stutter-stepped or abruptly changed course.
After a few rounds of this, the ol’ man ordered Judy to whoa and the dog froze, a thousand-yard stare fixed on her muzzle. The ol’ man beamed, praised the dog profusely and let the lead gently slip from his fingers to pat her head approvingly.
Right on cue, Judy rocketed, as if launched from Cape Canaveral. The ol’ man bellowed at the top of his lungs to get the dog to stop. He should have saved his breath, and vocal cords, for all the good it done. The only thing the yelling accomplished was to leave the ol’ man with a severe case of laryngitis, and for a solid week after that he could take only soup and hot tea with honey.
We hurriedly piled into the ol’ man’s pickup and rode the section on the lookout for the dog, interrogating anyone we came across to see if they had spotted Judy. An old woman hanging laundry said the “black monster” just about gave her a stroke when it knocked over a snow fence and barreled through her garden. A mailman out on the rural route said the dog nearly forced him into the ditch when it appeared out of nowhere and bounded in front of his vehicle.
Other than that, no one else reported a sighting and the trail went cold.
We returned home an hour later just as the phone started ringing. It was the farmer. Judy was on his front porch, asleep, after having gulped down a half gallon of water.
“She showed up ‘bout 30 minutes ago, Gus,” he reported. The farmer lived nine miles outside of town.
“We’ll be right over to fetch her,” the ol’ man told the farmer and we loaded a dog crate in the bed of the pickup and headed down toward the shore where the farmer lived. The ol’ man never uttered a harsh word to Judy when he retrieved her that afternoon. A couple days later, he took her back to the exact same spot in the field where she ran off to continue the training, but this time, instead of just clipping a lead to the dog, he also fastened a length of heavy logging chain to her collar.
“There,” the ol’ man said with a knowing wink, “that outta throw a hitch in her wagon.”
And it did, too, but it didn’t stop Judy. When she ran off that day it took her the better part of two hours to reach the farmhouse, the logging chain rattling behind her like Marley’s ghost.
Having lugged that chain nine miles over plowed fields, pastures and through woodlots, Judy, understandably, was hungry when she reached the farmstead and quickly polished off a chicken.
Her repast was interrupted when the farmer’s wife looked up from vegetables she was canning in the kitchen, shocked to see the big dog standing in the middle of the barnyard with a mouthful of feathers and ran outside to beat it with a broom.
The phone rang again at our house. It was the farmer. His wife was in a boil. The dog had to go.
“I’m fond of Judy but she’s not worth the aggravation. You’d be doing me a huge favor, Gus, if you could take the dog off my hands,” the farmer pleaded. The ol’ man hesitated, but when the farmer sweetened the pot with a promise of unfettered access to his property during pheasant season, he caved.
Shortly thereafter the ol’ man begin complaining that his real job – he drove a delivery truck – was getting busy and he couldn’t devote the energy needed to training.
“Tom,” he said to me one morning over breakfast, uncharacteristically addressing me by my Christian name, his voice still raspy from the laryngitis. “Judy’s yours.”
“Mine?” I stammered into my Sugar Pops. “What for?”
“To train, of course.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“How old are you now?” he asked.
“Almost 14.”
The answer seemed to surprise him and a deep crease split the ol’ man’s brow as if in serious thought. “Well,” he said, “your brothers had already worked two dogs each by that point.”
“Yeah, but those were setters, not wolfhounds. And, besides, those guys are good at anything they set their hand to. I’m not.”
The ol’ man weighed that. I could see he was fishing for a suitable response. “You’re fair at board games,” he finally offered halfheartedly.
“Not really.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” he said.
“I don’t know the first thing about it.”
“You’ll figure it out,” he said, swirling a piece of toast on his plate to dab up the last bit of fried eggs. He stood, grabbed his hat and headed for the door. “And if it were me,” he said over his shoulder, “I’d start today.”
Later that morning after breakfast, I went to the kennels to have a word with Judy before we started our first day of field work together. “If you’re to be my dog,” I informed her, “then I get to name you. From here on out, I’m gonna call you Jude, after Saint Jude, the patron saint for lost causes.”
The next thing I did was double the length of the logging chain and attach the rear axle of an old riding mower to it. That put a stop to her disappearing act.
Every day after school in the fall, I’d rush home to take Jude to the field outback to train and exercise her. The ol’ man had built a homemade pigeon launcher from the springs of a worn-out sofa and a packing crate, and it got so the dog would hold steady to the point and flush, not rock solid, by any stretch, but good enough for my purposes.
And for the most part, she retrieved and returned dummies to hand. Jude had come a long way and she now responded promptly to voice commands and whistles but, still, I fretted that she would take flight the minute she was freed from bondage and I needed to find out how she would perform before the season opener.
I had a farmer’s permit that allowed me to operate motorized vehicles during daylight hours and a couple weeks before hunting season I drove Jude to a spot north of town where I had seen pheasants on my way to and from school. This would be her final test. With nothing to hold her back but my voice and a whistle, there was no earthly way that I could stop her if she choose to run.
I dropped the pickup’s tailgate and Jude softly hopped to the ground, waiting patiently for the command to hunt. When I snapped a light-weight leash to her collar and unfastened the logging chain, she remained sitting on her haunches, bewildered. It was only when I turned my back and started walking toward the field that it hit her that she was free and unencumbered.
All I saw was a blur as Jude bowled past me on a dead run, over a fence, through a hedge and into the field. She was 20 yards away before I regained my wits and hollered, “whoa” as loud as I could.
To my astonishment, and everlasting joy, the dog braced in mid-stride and came to a dead stop. For the remainder of that afternoon, she quartered the field, worked up wind and found and pointed birds.
I had a huntin’ dog, albeit one that looked better suited to tow a milk wagon than perform in field trials.
Opening day was a success, if you overlook the time Jude dove into a hay pile and came out with a hen pheasant clenched in her teeth. Or when she was hot on the scent of what I believed was a rooster only to be surprised -- though not nearly as much as the dog -- to see a large racoon dangling from Jude’s snout as she emerged from a stand of cattails yelping in pain. But those were trifles.
For the rest of that season, I spent every spare moment with Jude hunting weedy ditch banks, the edges of cut corn fields and overgrown orchards. Her bird-finding talents far outstripped my shooting skills, but, nonetheless, we got our fair share of pheasants and we had become a team.
Time passed quickly that first year and the final weekend of the upland season arrived before I knew it. It had started snowing Friday night and come Saturday the ground outside my bedroom window glistened like a new quarter. I was laying in my bunk thinking about where Jude and I would hunt that day when the ol’ man rapped on the door.
“Tom, you awake?”
“Yeah,” I answered.
“You need to get dressed,” he said, crossing the threshold into the room and turning on the light. “Your dog got out of the kennel last night.”
“What,” I bolted up, and held my breath, dreading what I might hear next.
“The sheriff called. Some drunk saw her walking alongside the road and tried to force her into his truck. Apparently, she mauled the guy pretty badly. Sheriff said it took more than a half-dozen stitches to close the wounds.”
“That’s not possible,” I said. “Jude hasn’t so much as growled at anyone.”
“I know that and that’s what I told the sheriff. The damn fool must have tried to manhandle her.”
“Where’s Jude now?”
“The sheriff has her.”
“Well, let’s go get her and bring her home,” I said and kicked off the covers.
“We can’t keep her here, Tom.”
“What, why not?” I cried.
“ ’Cause it’s the law. If a dog attacks a person, sheriff’s either got to put her down or we got to move her to a place out in the country. She can’t stay in town any longer. I called the farmer. He’s willing to take her back but only temporarily while we look for a permanent place for the dog.”
“That ain’t right,” I protested.
“My hands are tied, son. Sorry.”
It took two weeks to find a new home for Jude and during that stretch I visited her every day after school and on weekends. She was always glad to see me, but it was obvious she was happy to be back on the farm.
The family that eventually agreed to take her lived on the western side of the state, 200 miles away. They already had one Irish wolfhound, which, for most people, would have been one too many, but they cherished the dog and wanted it to have a companion. They also lived on a 250-acre farm and their teenage son, also named Tom, was a bird hunter.
It was a crisp, late fall morning when we left home to make the drive across state, Jude squeezed between me and the ol’ man on the front seat like an accordion, the pickup’s windows fogged by her warm breath.
The ol’ man turned on the radio and found a Michigan football game. At halftime, with the score tied, the ol’ man switched it off and we rode in silence for a while.
“I gotta be honest with you, Tom,” he finally said. “I had my doubts about you training the dog.” Jude lifted her head from my lap as if to catch what was being discussed. “But I was wrong.”
“Beginner’s luck,” I said.
“That weren’t luck, Tom,” the ol’ man said.
I watched as the autumn landscape whipped past my window and reached over and scratched Jude behind the ear. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” I said.
“Take my word for it,” he said and turned the ballgame back on. “You got the touch. Not many people do.”
That was high praise for the ol’ man, and unexpected, but it wasn’t altogether accurate. It was Jude who taught me, an immature kid, far more than I ever taught her. I gave her my time and attention and, in the bargain, I found confidence, a purpose and a kinship with her and the ol’ man that I hadn’t known before.
When we pulled into the lane at Jude’s new home, the whole family came out of the house to greet us. Jude sprang from the truck and loped on over to say hello, her enormous tail happily scything back and forth.
We stayed to get acquainted with Jude’s new owners and, after a bit, they invited us to lunch. The ol’ man thanked them but said we had to be on our way. I cried when we drove off and left Jude that day, but it was clear that’s where she belonged.
I saw Jude once more after that a few years later. I stopped over at the family’s farmhouse on my way out West to spread some of the ol’ man’s ashes after he had died of cancer. Tom and I talked into the better part of the night swapping Jude stories, the big dog sprawled out near us, sleeping peacefully, like some mythical sea creature that had come ashore.
Mark Pawlosky © 2026