Jones, Button and Snuff sit quietly in their kennels as the trailer carrying the three Boykin Spaniels bounces along behind the pickup truck. It is a fine day—cool and cloudless, with only an unmistakable anticipation hanging in the air—and Johnny Holden parks in a field on his Galivants Ferry farm and gets out, dog whistles and remote controls dangling around his neck.
Holden walks into the field and sets up two electronic launchers, then goes back to the trailer and lets Jones out first. The little dog, with his floppy ears and big yellow eyes and curly brown hair, sniffs around excitedly, big tongue panting, and rolls around in the grass on his back. But as soon as Holden yells—“Heel! Sit!”—the dog heels, and sits, and perks up, ready for action.
With the punch of a button on his necklace, Holden fires one of the launchers, propelling a rubber duck dummy in the air with a loud bang, simulating a hunt. But the dog doesn’t move. Only when Holden gives a voice command does Jones take off, bounding and leaping through the field at LockHaven Farm to find the dummy wherever it has landed in the tall grass…