Hunting dogs are athletes required to perform in all kinds of weather and are exposed to environmental hazards rarely found in a backyard. Further, many hunting dogs have a drive so strong it overrides discomfort. They may not immediately display symptoms of something potentially lethal—which means their mortality clock may already be ticking toward alarm when you discover the problem.

External injuries such as severe lacerations, gunshots, and broken bones need obvious attention. They can be treated in the field and are (usually) not life-threatening. On the other hand, the early stages of GDV, hypothermia, poisoning, heat stroke, and hypoglycemia start with symptoms that don’t look particularly threatening but can kill a dog more quickly than most of us realize. For example, dogs experiencing bloat and stomach torsion may have as little as 20 minutes to an hour before going into shock and losing consciousness. Hypothermia sets in when a dog’s body temperature drops below 100 degrees from its normal 101 to 102.5 degrees—just a drop of 2 or 3 degrees is enough. The neurotoxin in blue-green algae can cause death within minutes. On an 85-degree day, the cab of a parked truck reaches 120 degrees in 30 minutes, with heatstroke occurring once the dog’s body temperature hits 109 degrees.

As hunters, we put our dogs in rigorous and demanding situations, far from veterinary care. A day’s hike into the backcountry, a bush plane’s flight across the tundra, even the remote seclusion of hunting camp all mean we’re a long way from an emergency vet and need many hours to get there. Loving our bird dogs as we do, we owe it to them to recognize the signs of life-threatening conditions and to learn how to treat them (when we can). In this article, we’ll look at bloat and torsion, and hypoglycemia. In future issues of Covey Rise, we’ll examine hypothermia, poisoning, and heat stroke.

Gardone, Val Trompia, isn’t a tourist town. Though that part of northern Italy is thick with natural beauty—ragged mountains, shimmering lakes, rolling green valleys—and Gardone’s ristorantes and trattorias serve spectacular food, few vacationers spend much time there—unless they’re passionate about firearms. Gardone is the heart of the Italian gun trade, as it’s been for more than 500 years. Today, several of the world’s finest gunmakers have shops in and around town. The side-by-sides and over-and-unders built there are beautiful in many ways—and one of their most impressive aspects is their engraving.

More than three thousand years ago, craftsmen in Gardone were using the region’s plentiful iron ore to build spears, knives, and shields. By the 15th Century, they were also making firearms. While colonial America fought for its independence, Gardone was busy as one of the gunmaking capitals of Europe. But after the United States was born and the 19th Century began, political forces in Europe flared up and blew Italy apart. Gardone’s gun trade was left in shambles. Bits and pieces survived, and a few makers limped along until the World Wars revived their trade. Then as World War II ended, the demand disappeared. If gunmaking were to survive in this Italian valley, the craftsmen there would have to find a way to reinvent their trade.

Although he personally wrote two books of note on upland game hunting and edited two more, Eugene Virginius Connett (1891–1969) made far more lasting and important contributions to the literature of field sports through his work as a publisher. His imprint The Derrydale Press, founded in 1926, remained active until 1941. Then, having somehow managed to weather the economic woes of the Great Depression, Derrydale faced setbacks due to the pressing demands of war—fine paper of the type he used in his books became almost impossible to obtain—and ceased operation just as the United States entered World War II. For the course of a decade and a half as scion of The Derrydale Press, though, Connett published splendid books and built an extraordinary stable of writers. His endeavor resulted in the finest concentration of literature the sporting world has known.

Connett was born on March 8, 1891, in South Orange, New Jersey, with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth. He attended elite St. Paul’s School for boys and enrolled at Princeton University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in 1912. He initially managed the family’s hat-manufacturing business, but after service in World War I, he shed the lucrative but restrictive manacles of business for matters closer to his heart. Harkening back to the joys he had derived from sport (notably, fly fishing and wingshooting) in his youth, he sold the family business. Then for a year he did little but travel, hunt and fish, and contemplate the future. At the end of that period, with help from a friend, noted antiquarian bookseller Ernest Gee, he launched The Derrydale Press.

At that point, Connett had already written a number of articles for leading outdoor magazines and was the author of a well-received book, Wing Shooting and Angling (1922). Once Derrydale was up and running, its early imprints focused on sporting history and works for the horses-and-hounds set. The appearance of Connett’s own Feathered Game (1929) signaled a new direction. Henceforth, works on upland sport would figure prominently among Derrydale books.