The American Beagler Forum

I stopped by here to check in after a few years away. I started going back over some of my very old posts and I realized something today. I quit. I stopped running...stopped taking my dogs out...stopped hunting bunnies. I still have 3 1/2 (one probably weighs 50 pounds) Beagles but after my best died I just lost interest in taking them out. Something happened while I was doing trials I don't want to even go into but it left a bad taste in my mouth and I just quit. But after looking over my posts I realized that I actually ENJOYED that time in my life. I miss it. I miss the fellowship and laughs. So I'm posting this as a warning to you all...I didn't just wake up one day and decide I wasn't going anymore. It crept in, little by little, and one of those bygone days was my last in the field listening to Beagles do what they love to do most. If you enjoy it then keep going my friends.

Once it's not fun anymore then it's time to take up golf...

I'd take up knitting before I would ever touch a golf club again!!! I never had a day I could get to the green and putt. It was usually one or the other. Could get there and not putt or putt but take too many strokes to get there. It's been over 40 years since I picked one up.

FLABSLAB wrote:I stopped by here to check in after a few years away. I started going back over some of my very old posts and I realized something today. I quit. I stopped running...stopped taking my dogs out...stopped hunting bunnies. I still have 3 1/2 (one probably weighs 50 pounds) Beagles but after my best died I just lost interest in taking them out. Something happened while I was doing trials I don't want to even go into but it left a bad taste in my mouth and I just quit. But after looking over my posts I realized that I actually ENJOYED that time in my life. I miss it. I miss the fellowship and laughs. So I'm posting this as a warning to you all...I didn't just wake up one day and decide I wasn't going anymore. It crept in, little by little, and one of those bygone days was my last in the field listening to Beagles do what they love to do most. If you enjoy it then keep going my friends.

I think the just creeping in, little by little is what happens with age. I can look all the way back to the days of my dad just teaching me how to squirrel hunt and just going with him with no gun. Then I got to sit by a log, under a Hickory nut tree with his first gun an ole single shot bolt action .22 that he handed down to me. Of course he wasn't but about 25 to 30 yards away but I guess he could hear me snoring on the side of that log. I then got to go rabbit hunting and they jumped shoot them until he and his brothers could go together and get an ole white dog. I got my first shotgun to hunt rabbits with and it was as most of us started with a single shot break down 410. Oh how I longed to get the limit so I could be one of the great hunters and finally did get that done. I lived and breathed the weekends in hunting season but now my season's have come and gone and the weekend is like every other day and killing game is as well. Yes, I still long to hear the sounds of music be it day or night BUT the legs that go under that longing have little by little slipped away. I still have them but they just aint as good as they once were but still as good as they always were once!

well get rid of the dogs ,its not their fault .

Wardog, I can relate to what u mean. I worked the stripmines for over 30 yr. and would come in about every eve and run beagles. Done this for over 30 yrs and still want to, but my body wont cooperate like when younger.

We worked 6 days a week and my boss had a squirrel dog untrained. We was talkin one day and he said " I get 1 day off and I plan on getting up early Sunday and taking my squirrel dog out, but the couch is as far as I make it."
I said , " Will,, sounds like u getting lazy, He said , " its not laziness, its getting old"

I'd say the "AGE" bug has bitten several of us !