A small aircraft lay at a strange angle and still things were blowing around as we rolled along, lurching here and there in the gusts of wind. We stopped on the end of the runway in takeoff position and again just waited. It was the last shoot of the pheasant season and I was thinking about them out there in this weather - fast birds, they would never have seen birds at this speed and I wondered just who had managed to shoot any at all?

About a quarter of an hour we sat there with the whole aircraft rocking about as the gale raged outside when suddenly we were off. Nobody said anything but the fear amongst my fellow passengers could be scented when the plane lifted off with a jerk instead of the smoothness we were all accustomed to. Like a roller coaster it climbed rapidly in jerks, leaps and bounds this DC10 as it met the tumbling air head on until that moment when the engines throttle back and takeoff changes to cruising. We had climbed higher than usual, quickly until we were now above the clouds and at around 15000 feet the voice came over the system "Sorry about that, maybe I shouldn't have gone for it?" Then there was a silence for a few minutes before he returned and assumed a calmer tone to tell us that all was well and the flight was to proceed as normal, if rather late.

It was also a shooting day in Ireland as we flew over that island in the afternoon on our way out over the Atlantic. Those people who are so enthusiastic for their dogs and horses, passionate in a way that we English find hard to come to terms with so that we have just had to manage the "Irish question" as they have shot and bombed each other year after year. We passed on just south of Greenland and Davis Straits where Newcombe had collected the Gyrs for the Old Hawking club and had flown them at the herons from Diddlington in the sky above my trout river at Cranford. Today the land is all forested as people considered the land worthless as open heath and in the last fifty years have created to biggest forest in Europe. No longer can we fly the falcons there but with the trees came the deer and now one dreams of Gyrs past as one sits in the high seat in Hockham, Diddlington or Cranwich just as the hawking party used to sit and wait in Cranwich High barn for the herons to fly up from the fen.

Even now it was not an uneventful flight as the voice came on again to say that we had such a head wind that we had run out of fuel. Late in an arctic afternoon we flew low over the snow covered brush and small frozen lakes where animal tracks could be seen as a tracery of gold rivulets in the snow across the ice as the watery sun reflected back at us. We were landing in Gandy, a cold deserted place where we were obviously a novelty observed by the few locals looking out from the air conditioned warmth of the buildings. Trucks stood deserted on the taxiways with their motors constantly running, wisps of exhaust gas drifting in the icy breeze, to cope with the intense cold. One of the officers briefly left the aircraft to file new flight plans but he did not linger long outside being poorly clothed for this unexpected climate. We flew down the east coast to New York later than expected and found ourselves circling Kennedy airport in the stack for more than an hour. The voice spoke again "Sorry about this but we have been diverted to Washington." Late that night in the Hyatt hotel at the airlines hospitality we were to see pictures on the TV of the plane below us in the New York stack which had crashed on approach killing its passengers and crew! This was no uneventful day. Jack Nash was an Irishman, the owner and force who created the Moanruad (pronounced Monroe) kennel of Irish Setters, he was "Mr. Irish Setter" to all who had seen the photograph in which he stands smiling with five dogs leashed in each hand every one a current Field Trial Champion owned and bred by him, an amazing total of 43 Field Trial Champions in his life. On this day and in this gale he was out with friends handling his dogs in his beloved Ireland for a shooting party. We flew high over that stormy country that same day in that same storm. It was the gale of the century all over western Europe and its first landfall was in Ireland. The party apparently passed under a large old tree when it cracked, one of its huge old limbs broke and fell. Jack was killed by that branch in that gale.

Jo-Jo had been his latest excitement and of all the dogs he had bred he had told Isobel that he felt this to be special. Joey had suddenly lost his master and Isobel's kennel in Norfolk was his rescue home. But life was not easy for Joey and he could not settle to life without his master, he pined for what he had lost, he became thin and nervous but still enjoyed the fields and the work. We met soon after I returned from America, some dreams shattered, others fulfilled. My team of dogs was now depleted, Feather having died in the Rio Puerco with the scent of her last green winged teal under her nose, killed by Jims tiercel after being found and flushed by her. Now I needed more setters and had happened upon Isobel and her happy team.

Joey went to Scotland for the grouse in August and worked well for the walking guns until he was badly frightened by a fool who just did not know dogs and how to behave. By this time Isobel decided that perhaps he would be more happy with a man again as his working partner and so he came to live at Sneath Farm. When I picked him up from Yorkshire it was on the spur of the moment that Isobel had let me know of her decision and I drove up there early the next morning. As Joey got into the van he lay down in the back and breathed an audible sigh which seemed like relief and just went to sleep. A four hour drive home normally seemed a long haul but there seemed to be a strange Irishness and magical Irish music seemed to fill the atmosphere, people laughing and talking - the journey seemed just a moment somehow. Joey never looked back from that moment.

Three years later I might have known that this was an exciting time when Joey pointed with great enthusiasm and excitement in the long grass of the bottom paddock at 6:00am on a sunny but cold June morning. Unusually he was barking to us all to come quickly to where he was, unsure of how to proceed. I and the other setters were in the green lane about 100 yards away and could not get there quickly enough as rising up in front of his gaze was an enormous pin cushion with a bottle brush tail which waved high above the grass threatening his approach. This was no ordinary cat, this was a very large cat, a cat as big as Joey in an English country field, a Puma!

We did not even get into the field before the confrontation became too much and Joey could not restrain his urging any more than the cat could handle the increasingly precipitous situation. As it noticed the rest of us approaching the field it flushed and made a bolt for the nearby ditch with Joey in hot pursuit. Only a few strides and they disappeared from sight and obviously Joey felt outpaced for he was soon back with the rest of us, the memory now past, interest only for the small birds which live in the hedges and trees of the lane. As though it had never happened we returned to the yard, this morning's walk complete and the day to get into its stride.

Some stride with a start like that, but is it unusual or is it better to expect the unexpected? I had been aware for some time that the foxes seemed less active than usual and that strangely there were bits of chickens lying around the fields in the mornings. We had not seen a fox down the lane for many months now when we were used to seeing them fairly often. Their paths and ditch crossing places had become overgrown which was strange. Now all was clear, we have a new resident in the territory, rumoured and reported in the newspapers and doubted as the late night imaginings of the pub crowd on their way home. A while later in the day Bob Collins called from Alaska "Is my pup ready?" I was astonished until he said that he had worked out that from our previous conversation it would be about now. "No, I'm afraid its not, Wissey did not come into season. Do you still want one?" "Oh yes." Three days later Wissey duly came into heat!

Wissey found something of interest at the pollarded oak next to the hedgerow pond. It was a usual fall back when the fields proved bare and often a Moorhen could be flushed in the absence of real game, better than nothing. But today proved blank even here and when Joey came to join her they once again decided to play sex. Cavorting around in the dead grass, ears alert, a jump here and there, "Oh go on," he seemed to say with a paw waved at her and they tried again. After days of patient wooing and petting at last it worked and the two of them were tied together by that old oak.

I let Blaze off and put the lead on Wissey as she looked a little surprised and unsure of what to do next. As she tried to move so Joey was dragged along with her and some reassurance was called for. Of course it always happens at the most inconvenient time and here I was in my best trousers dressed for town in a muddy field with four dogs including Spence the springer, two of which were mating. Blaze and Spence were jealous, Joey smug and Wissey just a bit apprehensive. We stood there as quietly as possible for about twenty minutes as the pheasants called getting out of the roots in the early morning mist. The light gradually brightened as the unseen sun came over the horizon and for Wissey the spell of the moment was broken as an old cock called just a few yards off in the stubble. Enough of this sex stuff, they parted and I let her off to get on with the important things of life. She was away into the mist with Blaze, leaving Joey to ponder what had been. Wissey was mated, Joey was satisfied and pheasants still had to be pointed.

On the ninth of September the litter was born, three bitches and six dog pups.