When we buried old Kelly we put up a plaque with the names of 18 upland birds burned into it. He'd pointed all of them from Alaska to Mexico and I wrote a book about them.

To this day nobody else has come forth to announce that his dog has pointed all 18 major species of North American game birds so I guess it's more unusual than I thought at the time. There may be some who figure the list could be broken down further and some who think we overdid it but our figure comes to 18 kinds of birds, and I've heard no complaints.

Now Kelly was a Brittany, a breed that comes on pretty slowly in the South where "bird dogs" are pointers with palmetto scratches on their ears. A Brittany is a spaniel that points like a setter. Kelly weighed about 38 pounds, was orange and white, fairly long-haired, and had a bobbed tail like other Brittanies. A male pointer will weigh 50 pounds or more in most cases and I have heard Kelly called a "little fuzzy dog." There is a lady who owns a quail plantation up near Monticello, is world famous for her fine pointers, and who calls Brittanies "snuffle pups." But she keeps a few of them around the place.

Frank Woolner, a famous gunner and author, is like some other bird hunters who feel a bird dog should have a long tail. Woolner wrote me that Brittanies work fine but he never could get used to shooting grouse over an Easter bunny. Kelly couldn't have cared less about such comments, figuring a pocket bird dog gets to make more trips, lives comfortably in a one-man mountain tent (with the man), and slides into a motel without attracting too much attention. Any canine who does all those things is likely to have personality and ideas of his own. Kelly did.

TAKE RETRIEVING, Kelly would bring the bird if you couldn't get to it yourself but he reasoned that he didn't have hands and it was an imposition to expect him to carry things around when it was easier for you. Shoot a bobwhite in short grass and he wouldn't touch it but when I spilled a ptarmigan over an Alaska cliff he clattered down after it, down into the mists hell-bent, just hitting the rocks now and then. I never expected him to get back but he did, and he had the bird, clawing his way over the edge again. When he knew I could see it he threw it down and went hunting.

When he was a pup we took him with us to work on some planted, penraised quail along with some young pointers. That's when he pointed his first quail and was doing such a good job of it that the preserve operator, wearing polished boots, told me I should walk up, pat him, and tell him he was a good dog. I did, although I was apprehensive. Kelly immediately lay down to have his belly scratched, to the amazement of a rigid pointer who was backing him. After getting the recognition he felt he deserved, Kelly wriggled happily, sniffed the grass and flowers with appreciation, then arose and again snapped into a classy point. The quail was surprised too, I think. I could see him plainly three feet away.

I don't shoot very well and Kelly was quite tolerant of me but he knew Buddy Nordmann was with it. After he gained experience he could make a federal case of pointing a single quail. He'd go through an elaborate stalking procedure, looking back at you as if to say, "Man, he's here and you'd better be ready!"

By the time Kelly actually pointed, many shooters would be a little unstrung. He did the whole bit for Buddy who doesn't miss very much. On this one occasion Buddy missed--twice. Kelly watched the quail disappear into the old orange grove and then looked sorrowfully toward Buddy who was standing there in shock. Kelly's heart brimmed with compassion. He trotted back to Buddy, put his paws on Buddy's belt, and looked sympathetically up into Buddy's red face.

Buddy reacted.

"Call off your damn dog!" he said.

KELLY CHARGED HARD WHEN HE HUNTED. That's how he broke his front leg and that's why he'd get overheated on warm Florida days. He'd take frequent breaks, digging holes to cool off in, and places where he'd hunted frequently looked like old battlefields.

A quail went up high to clear some trees and I miraculously nailed it so that it plunged into an area where I couldn't mark it down. Kelly went in to look for it but he didn't come back and after a little whistling and yelling I went in to look for him. I finally found him flattened out on his stomach in a fresh hole. He looked up when I came floundering through the brush and I made some remarks about his goofing off when there was a bird down. He reached over to where the bird was lying beside him and flipped the quail toward me with his nose.

Case closed.

He then cooled off for three or four minutes before going back to work.

HE HAD A SENSE OF HUMOR. In his youth he continually ran afoul of skunks. He didn't hurt them, just managed to fool around until they doused him. There was once when my wife greeted me with a jug of vinegar as I dismounted from the truck.

"I smelled you when you turned in the driveway," she said. Kelly strolled over to get his bath.

Then Kelly decided skunks were a joke and he didn't get too close to them any more. There was the time when he pointed at the wreckage of an old wagon and I went over and kicked it. No doubt then as to what was hiding under the wagon and as I whirled about to escape I saw that Kelly was already 50 yards away where he had headed as I aimed the kick. He was grinning happily.

In some of the country we hunted there were quite a few porcupines. Some dogs repeatedly get quilled and I can de-quill a dog blindfolded although it can be pretty tough on the dog. As far as I know Kelly never in all his life got a single quill in him.

Kelly always scorned Murphy, a big square-headed English pointer I used to hunt Hungarian partridge. Murphy wasn't much of a thinker and Kelly considered him a congenital idiot. He loved to see Murphy in trouble.

Murphy pointed at the edge of some brush and Kelly backed him gleefully and kept turning and looking at me as I hurried up from 200 yards away.

I couldn't hear him but I am sure Kelly said, "Boss, you gotta' see this. Come on."

Then while I was still 50 yards away, Kelly tippy-toed up beside Murphy who was all charged up and quivering anyway.

"Yip!" said Kelly right in Murphy's ear, and Murphy charged.

Poor old Murphy landed right on a big, irritated porky and gave a pathetic howl of pain. Kelly disappeared and it was only when I got out the pliers and took a death grip on Murph that he came back to watch me pull the quills. It made his whole day and he grinned ecstatically.

AS HE GREW OLDER KELLY LEARNED his combat limitations but he had definite opinions of other dogs. He was peaceful most of the time but there were certain dogs he didn't like and never would. One of these was Iron Mike, a larger Brittany who had spent his youth in the street, and knew his way around. Mike was too big to fit the Brittany specifications and I think a setter got under a fence somewhere in his ancestry, even though he was properly registered.

The feud really started when I somehow picked up Kelly after picking up Iron Mike from a friend's kennel. This was an insult. That was Kelly's truck. In somebody else's car he was the polite guest. To be greeted by a big ugly dog already in his own vehicle was too much, and on the way to the hunting grounds Kelly kept growling at a pitch seemingly far too low for so small a dog. He sounded a little like a stuck Jeep. Mike, who was not used to being pushed around, growled back.

They worked together all day but just before going in we put them down to hunt one more spot and apparently we put them out of the truck too close together. Maybe I set one of them on top of the other as I unloaded. Anyway, they turned into a blurred ball of brindle fur from which came sounds like feeding time at the zoo.

I am not too good at breaking up dog fights but I was hunting with Ben Williams who has spent some time as a professional dog trainer and we walked in with confidence. I still have a scar on my leg to prove I tried. Ben got it through the hand and the whole thing turned into a bloody mess. We finally broke it up but neither dog was satisfied and to the day Kelly died we had to watch them closely.

As we patched up our wounds, Ben remarked that there had been times when Kelly was winning. Then he repeated the old saying:

"It's not the size of the dog in the fight. It's the size of the fight in the dog!"

A LITTLE MUTT WITH FIRE can go awfully good for a while. Somebody let a yellow Lab get too close to Kelly's dish one time and Kelly had him pretty badly chewed up before we stopped it. Of course once the Lab got started Kelly would have been only a tidbit. I'm really not bragging about having a fighting dog but it was hard not to admire the little rascal.

"He'd have made a hell of a football player," a coach once told me.

But like other dogs who live with people and without other dogs around constantly, Kelly turned into something of a prima donna. He didn't eat very much and during hunting season we worried a little about it. Give him a doggie bone and he'd trot around and show it to everybody, then put it away somewhere.

Ben Williams, the aforementioned expert, visited our house one time when Kelly was ignoring his heaped dish.

"Trouble is," Ben said, "he has no competition for food and he enjoys being coddled and coaxed. Makes him feel important. Watch this."

So Ben got down on hands and knees and approached Kelly's dish. Kelly suddenly became attentive. His eyes popped. His tail stiffened.

Ben stopped at the dish and stuck his head down toward it.

"Slurp, glub, glub," said Ben.

Kelly looked at me in amazement and back at Ben. Ben got up and walked away. Kelly hurried to the dish and ate the whole thing rapidly with his eyes rolling apprehensively. This was a gratifying experience for me; it proved conclusively that we were just as smart as Kelly, maybe smarter.

Now if you are going to haul a dog all over the country to hunt all of those birds you need a good traveler. When Kelly was quite young we got him a Miami Beach towel. It had palm trees and "Miami Beach" in big letters and Kelly soon learned he was supposed to stay on that towel when living in motels. As time went on he learned that as long as he could touch the towel everything was all right. He would take a pretty long lead like a guy edging off first base but when anyone looked at him he'd tag up again.

As the years went by Kelly learned that he could leave his towel with impunity when he was alone. Oh, he'd never get on a bed or anything that would leave any incriminating evidence but when you came back you'd hear him scramble to tag up again. The towel was getting pretty well worn when Kelly left us just before he was eight years old, but he never nibbled it or scratched it. That towel was important, even when he was a pup and a little hard on other softies he found lying around.

THERE ARE POINTING SPECIALISTS who learn only one or two birds. Kelly would point to anything after he learned we wanted it, but he always felt big birds were better. The toughest time I had keeping him in line was when I'd hunt valley quail (California quail) in chukar country.

The chukar is a cackling rascal who lives in the high, dry mountain country, sometimes adjacent to the bottoms and draws where quail stay. If Kelly was tending to business with the quail and happened to hear a chukar call he'd slip off, going faster and faster, and head for the high places. Chukar were bigger and hence more important. After a little I'd see him parading around on a hillside trying to get me to follow him and the chukars.

And old Kelly would point woodcock. It took him only an hour or so to learn that business despite what folks say about the timberdoodle smelling different and having no attraction for dogs that haven't been trained for them.

The man I first went woodcock hunting with was a loyal pointer man and a good one, who asked if that little fuzzy dog would point birds. I didn't impress him with my answer and he figured my dog was going to be a nuisance. The pointers tended to put him down, too.

Well, Kelly found a woodcock and a big handsome pointer backed him momentarily and then hunkered down and sneaked past Kelly like a Walt Disney animated snake. When the big pointer had passed Kelly, he stood up and stole the point. The pointer's owner walked in, kicked up the bird and downed it, called "Fetch!" and complimented me on my dog.

"That little fuzzy dog sure backs good," he said.

Thanks a lot.

A while later my new friend's big pointers failed to find a woodcock that was evidently trundling around in a grassy patch. After considerable careful shuffling they went off. Along came Kelly, operating on his own, checked the grass patch and nailed the woodcock. My friend kicked it up and shot it.

"That little fuzzy dog's tired," he said. "I'm going to put him back in the car."

He did and Kelly spent the rest of the afternoon trying to dismantle the dog box and yelling bloody murder. Being banished was the final insult of a day of injustices.

It took me several years to shoot all of the upland birds of North America over Kelly. It started out by accident, and then I suddenly realized I had most of them and began to plan special trips.

Long ago Kelly went to where I like to think all of the bones are juicy and the birds never flush wild. They say a man is entitled to one good hunting dog in a lifetime. I guess I've had mine.