It wasn't supposed to happen like this. He was supposed to be 12, or 14 or 15. I was going to take him down to the vet then, when he was too old to run all day, too stiff to walk up and down the stairs, too tired to eat. We would share a few last moments together, and I'd have a pheasant wing for him to sniff, to hold, and to remember with. And the doc would give him the shot, and he'd drift peacefully off to hunt his fields of the sky.

I wanted a German Shorthair pup, and we searched kennels all over the state for him. He was whelped in a barn across a dirt road from an Amish farm, his dad a fine-looking birddog with a pedigree noticably superior to most human's we know. He wasn't like the other pups in his litter, instead of playing with his littermates, or chewing on my shoe laces, he just sat and looked me over the whole time I talked to the breeder. I wanted a white one, but my wife figured he had me picked out. The bacon-grease and liver shorthair rode in my lap on the 3-hour drive home, asleep, contented, peaceful.

I had him named before I picked him. Manfred, after Baron Manfred von Richtohoven, the Red Baron. See, he got the most "birds". Id was his middle name, from the Freudian concept of the pleasure-seeking element of the psyche. Tamaron's Id Manfred. It didn't exactly roll off the tongue, but I only had to say "Manny!" in the field, point at a particular brush pile or in a particular direction, and he would dutifully give it the once over with that incredible nose. I learned very early in his career to have absolute trust in his nose. This was one of the more important of the innumerable lessons he taught me about hunting.

We got involved in a local birddog club, and it wasn't long before he was put up to hunt with other, more experienced dogs. We let him out of the truck the morning of the first hunt and over the hill he went. I figured he was long gone, but as I huffed my way to the top of about the seventh ridge I found him locked solid on point, indicating a quail that had been missed on the last outing. Several times that day the 5-month-old pup was on point, with all the experienced dogs running about without a clue that there might be birds in the field. It didn't take me long to figure out this club was a bit below his level of intensity. And that rank and title don't always put birds in the bag.

He was never terribly intense on point; his intensity came in the search. Time after time his first year, a mottled streak across the field, a shower of snow as he slammed on the brakes, and a squared-up point at certain game. Head and tail high, a virtual New World Michelangelo. Ever patient for the human, he never broke point until I arrived. And he could run all day, full out, a high-nosed master of the wind. We used to laugh that the only way we could slow him down a bit was to maybe hack off one leg and tie up the other three. He hunted this spring twice, and while his pace may have slowed a bit in his seventh year, he found just as many birds as his hotrod cousin, plus, he found the first bird both days to boot.

While his cousin may seem to be a canine jazz improv, Manfred was pure Wagner. Never a clown, this dog was regal, and all business. He is the only beast I knew that scared my friend's 110 lb Chesapeake. He didn't play like most dogs, while the other two played tag or tug-the-log, he hunted. Mice, voles, grasshoppers if nothing else moved. His versatility was global, as the squirrels, cats and other unfortunate critters who ventured into our fenced yard would discover. I couldn't mention Manny without reference to his nose, his amazing, unfailing nasal radar. Once, we put up a covey of quail he pointed, and while retrieving one of the downed birds, Manfred locked up. Incredibly, a lone quail was sitting upwind in a bush better than 40 yards away, he smelled it with a warm bird in his mouth. Witnessed. Another time, he refused to move on release after pointed game wasn't located. "Where's the bird, Manny?" He just dropped his nose to a much steeper angle, and when pushed, the bird flew out from between his feet.

He was a great camp dog. "Firedog!" was the command, and he relished his duty to keep the sparks from the fire from escaping his purview. Have problems with varmints in the perimeter? Not with "The Death Monster" around, his sharpness on non-game animals was at times amazing and always entertaining. He loved gunfire, and would retrieve missed clays thrown on the range at the Prairie. We went on numerous solo adventures to the Prairie, often in the dead of winter. His company led me to believe that any canine companionship was almost certainly superior to most human company, though he never did offer to buy the beer. He was a most cherished friend, and now he's gone.

We went north a couple weeks ago, and he fell ill a couple of days later. Early primary hyperparathyroidism was one diagnosis. Lyme's disease. Electrolyte imbalance. Symptoms led us to consult a canine neurologist, a myelogram was ordered, bone cancer found on surgery in his 13th vertebra. We let him sleep on.

We found a flowering "Red Baron" crabapple to bury him under, and planted it and the dog on our skeet range on the Prairie. He can keep an eye on us from his hillside resting place, and I can still shoot clays over him knowing how much he loved it. My first gundog can still laugh at my shooting, and watch over his cousin who has picked up the duty of retrieving missed clays from the field. Occasionally I think I hear Manny whispering instructions to Remy in an effort help train him, the only mission he left unfulfilled.

It wasn't supposed to happen like this, except for the tears. He had a good life, he was loved, and he loved in return. A big piece of him will be in every dog I have, because I think he taught me most everything I could need to know about birddogs and a lot about life. I am a sincerely grateful student, a lonely yet grateful friend.

"Hunt on, Manny! Find the birds!" When next we hunt, my friend, I won't have to wonder where you'll be. I'm certain I'll find you just over the seventh ridge.