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The breeder said he couldn't be taught. He was incorrigible, stubborn, and stupid, so I got a steal of a deal on him. I thought he might at least make a good house dog if he couldn't be taught to hunt, so I bought him.

I worked with him, got him used to the sudden shock of gunfire, and spent weeks trying to get him to listen to commands in the field. Try as I might, though, I started to think the breeder was correct, despite the fact that the dog came from a long line of great gun dogs. I'm not sure whether there's a canine equivalent of ADHD, but if there is, I was convinced that the dog was certainly a classic case.

Then, right when my frustrations were on the brink of leading me to give up on him, something happened. He got his first scent of a quail.

In that instant, something clicked. Some strand of DNA hidden deep in his genetic makeup stretched and flexed and was suddenly activated. Two thousand years of breeding rose abruptly to the surface of his consciousness. He stopped dead in his tracks and hit a point, head lowered to the ground, tail extended straight behind him, and he stood still as a statue and held the point. So solid was his stance that it earned him a new name - Rock.

He held the point until I moved in behind him, and when I tapped his hip, he stalked in as steady and soft as a cat toward the clump of brush where the bird was hidden. When I flushed the bird, Rock took off in pursuit, and when I fired and the bird fluttered to the ground, Rock picked it up, brought it back to me, and dropped it at my feet as if he'd been hunting for years.

From that moment on, Rock became one of the best gun dogs I've owned. He was friendly and had a gentle demeanor, but as soon as the Jeep door opened and he jumped into the field, he was instantly serious. He was so focused when he hunted that he was completely impervious to pain, not caring whether briars were ripping his flesh as he dove into the brush in pursuit of a quail, not seeming to notice even when a few pellets of birdshot ended up hitting him. It was a rare hunt when he didn't have pink streaks of blood tinting his white fur at the end of the day.

He filled out until he was a stocky 70 pounds - very large for a Brittany - and every vet who saw him first commented that he needed to lose some weight, until they started to examine him and realized that the weight was all dog. His weight didn't slow him down, though. He was just as fast and nimble in the field as any other dogs in the hunt, and his endurance was remarkable. He'd hunt until he collapsed. The hunt was such unbridled joy for him that he never tired.

About ten years ago, I decided to give him a vacation. I took him with me when I spent a few weeks hiking a nearby spur of the Appalachian Trail, and he loved it. The mountains were full of new scents and wildlife he'd never encountered before, and he was systematic about surveying the new country and reporting back to me every thing he'd found. He chased deer, jumped a few grouse, rolled in the creeks, wallowed in the mud, and thoroughly enjoyed himself. At night, he'd snuggle next to me in my sleeping bag to share his warmth against the chill that settles on the mountain at night.

In keeping with Appalachian Trail tradition, we needed trail names. Since he was so much more serious about scouting the countryside than I, he became known as "Order" and I became "Chaos," and the trip was one of the most memorable of my life. We were a team.

In the past few years, Rock had slowed. Arthritis settled in his front legs and his stamina had waned. At fourteen years, he was approaching his seniority and I had begun to realize he would soon need to be retired, to be moved from his kennel at the hunt club and given a warm and comfortable indoor life to live out his remaining years in contentment, with the occasional hunt to allow him to savor his youth. This year, I had decided, would be his last before he'd get his gold watch and going away party.

This morning, I was planning on my first hunt of Rock's final year. I awoke early, stuffed my shotgun in its case, grabbed my shell bag, and headed out to the hunt club.

When I opened Rock's kennel and called him, however, he didn't come out of his doghouse. I looked inside and he was curled up asleep, and when I woke him, he had none of his usual enthusiasm. Instead, he gave a halfhearted wag of his tail and tried to stand, but wobbled and fell. I helped him out of his kennel, and he could barely walk. His legs creaked with every movement, and he was in obvious pain.

With a great deal of assistance from me, he managed to get into the car, but when we got out to the field, he wouldn't budge. I cut the hunt short and called the vet.

Forty-five minutes later, the vet met me at his office, looked Rock over, and declared that his arthritis was so severe that Rock was essentially an invalid. He'd developed hip dysplasia on top of that, and the vet described the degree of Rock's pain as excruciating.

We discussed his prognosis and the likely progression of the arthritis and dysplasia, and the vet finally informed me that he thought the best course was euthanasia, and that's what we ultimately did.

And now, here I am without my teammate. Here I am without my hunting buddy. Here I am alone in the field.

Now, here I am...

Chaos. Without Order.

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