As your dog get up in age you really come to appreciate every day out-especially the opening day. Hooked up with Buddy and his son Paul. Buddy now has a young GWP "Hank" and Paul has 'Cooper' a yeller' dog that has really turned out great. I hit the road at 2am and met them at our usual starting spot in the dark. We could here them roosters cackling up in the crp before we even started. As has become tradition we probably did eveything wrong and as we worked the field 8 to 12  roosters took off well out of range. Got points on some hens but we left that 1st field with 0. Now thats not a good thing because that was the best chance at getting it done on opening day-as ya know that everything you hit for the rest of the day will have already been worked over. Plus it was gonna get hot- and it did. After several hours in other fields Buddy and Paul hed 2 each but me and Cletis still scratch.  I just could not let that happen-so when those guys took off to take a break for lunch at 11 I kept the old dog on the ground. We always seem to do best solo- no controls-no line-no plan to adhere to. I go where he says we go. We scored quickly. We ran in that field for 2 more hours. It was hot- went thru numerous bottles of water- We quit happy with just that one bird. All in all that old dog was on the ground for 6 hours. Again he willingly gave me what he had and that was plenty. One of the best things about those old dogs is they know whats up-they know whats next. We get home and he should be dead tired - instead he is bouncing off the walls cuz he knows that at some point I will get that bird out and if I am not a total A-hole he can get to hold it again...just can't get enough!  1st pic is holding the bird by the road, 2nd is after he followed me in and out of the garage 10 times shuffling stuff, now providing close supervision as we prepare to clean that sacred attraction. It was a great day. Thanks Buddy for letting us come play!