Sometimes, I forget what I’m doing. Seeing him locked up like some ancient, graven image, with a level of simmering, white hot focus beyond anything I’ll never truly know, yeah, I’ll admit that I can easily forget everything else, including why we’re supposedly here. That there is an unseen third party somewhere close by. That this is merely the prelude to an explosion that can go any one of several different ways. I want the moment to continue; this traingulated tension to be savored indefinitely, but all such swings of the pendulum eventually seek equilibrium, and the longer the build up the more abrupt and chaotic the release tends to be.
But sometimes, all of this just goes out the window, and I look at him, truly dumbfounded by the capabilities of this high-performance animal, and the ways he must experience the world so differently from my own, though we stride through it together. I’m so distracted with admiring the beauty of this point that the bird gets up and I’m not ready and I feel like a head in clouds idiot. And the briefest of glances from over his shoulder makes me feel even more so. But he immediately forgives and forgets and throws every bit of himself into getting out there and doing it again, and it is this, not the missing of the shot, that lets me know I’m the lesser of two creatures here.
The frequency of this doesn’t decrease with experience. In fact, quite the opposite.
– Smithhammer
Mouthful of Feathers 
Exactly. I’m thinking of bringing a hired gun with me this season so I can just admire the dogs.
High performance indeed! I dig the work you all are doing here, will be tuned in.
Any more, I’d as much enjoy just tagging along watching the dogs work! Save lugging a gun around all day, too! … And, I wouldn’t miss a thing!!
I missed so many times one day that I had my GSP male dog turn his head and look at me with a with a look that was worse than the one my better half gives me when I come home late from work after stopping by a local gin mill for some barley hops.