It was Friday night on the eve of opening weekend of duck season in Arkansas. Me, my dad and Dow Anderson had made the 8 hour drive to Stuttgart and were relaxing at the lodge with an adult beverage. The head guide came up to me and said "Hey, you the guy who brought a dog". Yes sir I brought my dog. He started telling me how he didn't like clients bringing dogs because they messed up the hunt for everybody. I said, well I sure would appreciate it if we could give him a chance in the morning. I told him if at any time Charlie wasn't cutting it to let me know and I would immediately go put him in the truck, no questions asked. He said fair enough.

The next morning me and Charlie were on the left side of the blind, the guide and his dog on the right. Seven heavily armed Cajuns in between us. When he yelled Take 'em, the sky was full of mallards. Ducks falling everywhere. Short birds, long birds, cripples, glide away cripples, short blinds, long blinds you name it, we had it. This went on for a while. The guide hollered at me" I got 4 down here how many you got Daren? Hang on let me count. I got 25 down here. He got out of the blind and walked around to my side and looked at the ducks we had hanging. I thought you were BS ing me. He said I 'm gonna put my dog in the truck, we'll finish out the hunt with Charlie. As he walked by me I looked at Dow Anderson who got me into the HRC program and he was smiling ear to ear. That night at the lodge the guide came up to me and said " In the morning we are just going to take Charlie, that o.k. with you? Sure man, that's fine with me. I am not telling this story to brag on my dog. I am bragging on all HRC dogs. An HR dog would have been a whole lot better than the guide’s dog. Not the dogs fault. He had spent a lot of time practicing his duck calling and little time on obedience. He said "No!" and "HERE!!!" more times than Ole Schooner had points. Conservation tool. We shot 108 ducks and recovered 107. 1 lost duck. Thanks HRC. Is this a great organization or what!!

Daren Hearn and Big Charlie

The Saga of Jasper and the Yeast Rolls...[hilarious]


We have a fox terrier by the name of Jasper. He came to us in the summer of 2001 from the fox terrier rescue program. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this type of adoption, imagine taking in a 10 year old child whom you know nothing about and committing to doing your best to be a good parent. Like a child, the dog came with his own idiosyncrasies. He will only sleep on the bed, on top of the covers, nuzzled as close to my face as he can get without actually performing a French kiss on me. Lest you think this is a bad case of "no discipline" , I should tell you that my husband and I tried every means to break him of this habit, including locking him in a separate bedroom for several nights. The new door cost over $200. But I digress.

Five weeks ago we began remodeling our house. Although the cost of the project is downright obnoxious, it was 20 years overdue AND it got me out of cooking Thanksgiving for family, extended family, and a lot of friends that I like more than family most of the time. I was however assigned the task of preparing 124 of my famous yeast dinner rolls for the two Thanksgiving feasts we did attend. I am still cursing the electrician for getting the new oven hooked up so quickly. It was the only appliance in the whole darn house that worked, thus the assignment.

I made the decision to cook the rolls on Wednesday evening to reheat on Thursday morning. Since the kitchen was freshly painted you can imagine the odor. Not wanting the rolls to smell like Sherwin-Williams latex paint #586, I put the rolls on baking sheets and set them in the living room to rise for 5 hours. After 3 hours, we decided to go out to eat, returning in about an hour.

An hour later the rolls were ready to go in the oven. It was 8:30pm. When I went to the living room to retrieve the pans, much to my shock one whole pan of 12 rolls was empty. I called out to Jasper and my worst nightmare became a reality. He literally wobbled over to me. He looked like a combination of the Pillsbury dough boy and the Michelin Tire man wrapped up in fur. He groaned when he walked. I swear even his cheeks were bloated. I ran to the phone and called our vet. After a few seconds of uproarious laughter, he told me the dog would probably be OK, however, I needed to give him Pepto-Bismol every 2 hours for the rest of the night. God only knows why I thought a dog would like Pepto-Bismol any more than my kids did when they were sick. Suffice to say that by the time we went to bed the dog was black, white and pink. He was so bloated we had to lift him onto the bed for the night.

Naively thinking the dog would be all better by morning was very stupid on my part. We arose at 7:30 and as we always do first thing; put the dogs out to relieve themselves. Well, the damn dog was as drunk as a sailor on his first leave. He was running into walls, falling flat on his butt and most of the time when he was walking his front half was going one direction and the other half was either dragging the floor or headed 90 degrees in another direction. He couldn't lift his leg to pee, so he would just walk and pee at the same time. When he ran down the small incline in our back yard he couldn't stop himself and nearly ended up running into the fence. His pupils were dilated and he was as dizzy as a loon. I endured another few seconds of laughter from the vet (second call within 12 hours) before he explained that the yeast had fermented in his belly and that he was indeed drunk. He assured me that, not unlike most binges we humans go through, it would wear off after a! bout 4 or 5 hours and to keep giving him Pepto-Bismol.

Afraid to leave him by himself in the house, my husband and I loaded him up and took him with us to my sister's house for the first Thanksgiving meal of the day. My sister lives about a 10 to 15 minute drive on a ranch. Rolls firmly secured in the trunk (124 less 12), and drunk dog leaning from the back seat onto the console of the car between my husband and I, we took off. Now I know you probably don't believe that dogs burp, but believe me when I say that after eating a tray of risen unbaked yeast rolls, DOGS WILL BURP. These burps were pure Old Charter. They would have matched or beat any smell in a drunk tank at the police station. But that's not the worst of it. Now he was beginning to fart and they smelled like baked rolls. God strike me dead if I am not telling the truth! We endured this for the entire trip to Karee's, thankful she didn't live any further away than she did. Once Jasper was firmly placed in my sister's garage with the door locked, we finally sat down to enjoy our first Thanksgiving meal of the day.

The dog was the topic of conversation all morning long and everyone made trips to the garage to witness my drunk dog, each returning with a tale of Jasper's latest endeavor to walk without running into something. Of course, as the old adage goes, "what goes in must come out" and Jasper was no exception. Granted, if it had been me that had eaten 12 risen, unbaked yeast rolls, you might as well have put a concrete block up my behind, but alas a dog's digestive system is quite different from yours or mine. I discovered this was a mixed blessing when we prepared to leave my sister's house.

Having discovered his "packages" on the garage floor, we loaded him up in the car so we could hose down the floor. This was another naive decision on our part. The blast of water from the hose hit the poop on the floor and the poop on the floor withstood the blast from the hose. It was like Portland cement beginning to set up and cure. We finally tried to remove it with a shovel. I (obviously no one else was going to offer their services) had to get on my hands and knees with a coarse brush to get the remnants off of the floor. And as if this wasn't degrading enough, the damn dog in his drunken state had walked through the poop and left paw prints all over the garage floor that had to be brushed too. Well, by this time the dog was sobering up nicely so we took him home and dropped him off before we left for our second Thanksgiving dinner at my husband's sister's house.

I am happy to report that as of today (Monday) the dog is back to normal both in size and temperament. He has had a bath and is no longer tricolor. None the worse for wear I presume. I am also happy to report that just this evening I found 2 risen unbaked yeast rolls hidden inside my closet door. It appears he must have come to his senses after eating 10 of them but decided hiding 2 of them for later would not be a bad idea. Now, I'm doing research on the computer as to How to clean unbaked dough from the Carpet.