Where the Red Fern Grows is the title of a book that was written approximately 35 years ago by Wilson Rawls. The main character of the book is a boy called Billy who grows up in the Ozarks around 1910. Billy’s main interest is coon dogs and raccoon hunting.

The book is often used by English teachers in the middle school age bracket. Ms. Ehrenfeld, an English teacher at the Rochester Middle School in New Hampshire has some great ideas that keep the students interested in the subject matter. She thought it would be great if somebody would come and speak to her students about training hunting dogs. She asked me and I immediately agreed to come and speak to the 107 middle school students. – I have always had a soft spot for teachers that use inventive techniques to get the students more involved in the subject matter.

My research for the event started in the library. I believed it would be beneficial if I had a prior knowledge of what Billy was up to. I was quite excited when I found an inscription in the front of the book written by some young person. It said: "This book is very good; read every page. But it is sad, sad." Underneath this some other person had written: "It is not sad, sad; just sad."

I read all 210 pages of the book and was moved by the story of this young Billy and his experiences as a dog trainer and hunter. It gave me a good foundation for my presentation to the students and also allowed me to make comments where I believed that it was prudent to disagree with some of Billy’s methods.

I brought three dogs with me to the demonstration. Namely the same three dogs that I told about in a previous piece (Season Opener, 1996), Breezy, Felix and Appi.

Before starting my demonstrations I asked how many of the students had dogs at home. More than half raised their hands. I then asked each individual what type of dog they had and was quite surprised by the answer. Approximately 90% of the students’ dogs were mutts!

I quickly learned that it is extremely difficult to keep the attention of 107 kids in the seventh grade for a full hour. To keep their interest I put in breaks where the students were just petting my three dogs. I believe the dogs enjoyed this part of the event more than the formal exercises I took them through.

I did some obedience work on lead, walking at heal on and off lead, and beginning execution of COME commands.

I then placed a dog on a table and showed the beginnings of the force train retrieve sequences. I used regular dummies, my buck knife, a cigar box and a fresh egg as well as potato chips as retrieving objects.

On the floor I used retriever exercises keeping control of the dog with the long lead.

After this I just let my three dogs loose and the students were all over them again while I answered their questions.

Before Christmas I received a nice thank you letter from the class. In it they stated: "…We loved every bit of it. – Your dogs were really nice and playful around us. -- We loved being able to meet a real dog trainer and pet his three dogs. – Some of the things you told us were really cool! Like the stuff about being an alpha dog in a group of dogs…."