A Sit-Down with a Legend

written by Butch Goodwin
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Northern Flight Retrievers  

In 1928, the population of Boise, Idaho, was about 12,000 people. And that year, 10-year-old John Lundy went riding with his parents in their Studebaker over 23 miles of dirt roads from Boise to Emmett, Idaho, to get his first hunting dog. His dad and uncle both worked for the railroad, and his uncle was bringing him a Chesapeake Bay retriever puppy on the train from Cascade, Idaho, from a country doctor who used the pup's parents on his sled dog team to visit his patients during the winter. That trip from Boise to Emmett and back took the better part of a day, largely because of having to negotiate the treacherous switchbacks of Freezeout Hill to get into and out of the town of Emmett. 

The boy grew up and became a Retriever Field Trial Hall of Famer. Dr. John Lundy - now 91, and whose most notable Chesapeake was the stalwart Atom Bob - was kind enough to sit down and tell me about his hunting and field trial adventures. I also met his 20-month-old Chesapeake pup, Chet, which he trains several days each week and has begun running in hunt tests and field trials. 

Dr. John Lundy with Chet

"You know," Dr. Lundy says, When I got that first pup in 1928, I named him Buster, and I didn't really know anything about hunting dogs. I was only ten; I just wanted a dog. I certainly didn't know about Chesapeakes. I just got the dog that my uncle bought for me. There weren't many Labs around in those days. Chesapeakes and pointing dogs pretty much dominated the hunting breeds around here. But just about everyone who had a retriever had a Chesapeake in the back of their car or truck. That's about all I knew about them. 

"When Buster was old enough to hunt, we learned to hunt together. We hunted almost every day, and although Buster had no training at all, he was one hunting [machine]. I could walk out from the house and there were lots of ducks and pheasants and quail for us to shoot - often not far from what is now downtown Boise. You almost never saw any geese in those days. I shot my first duck over that dog when I was eleven years old. Buster was my best buddy, he even pulled the lawn mower for me. And when I would run away from home, my parents always knew where to find me because I never made it any farther than Buster's dog house!" 

Dr. Lundy and FC AFC Atom Bob at the 1959 National Open Championship.

After graduating from high school in Boise, John Lundy went to Whitman College in Washington State on a tennis scholarship and then on to the University of Southern California where he received his Doctor of Dental Surgery degree in 1942. Dr. Lundy enlisted in the U.S. Army after graduation and served in the Army Air Corps in the Aleutian Islands. During that time, he bought a female Labrador from a kid who was throwing a stick for her along the beach. He named her Peggy, and she slept on his sleeping bag at night and flew with him on missions in his P-38 fighter plane. 

After the war, Lundy returned to Boise to start his dental practice, and he bought a female Chesapeake puppy for $35 from an ad in Outdoor Life magazine. It took five days for the dog to reach Boise by train from Wisconsin. He named her Aleutian Water Spray - using the kennel name "Aleutian" after his time spent in the Aleutian Islands while in the service (The Aleutian kennel name can be found to this day in the pedigrees of many of the greatest Chesapeakes of the last half century). "I didn't know any more about training her than I did the dogs before her, but not long after I got her as a pup, I smacked a merganser for her and she jumped right in the river and instinctively brought the bird back to me. I think it was at that point that I was just hooked on Chesapeakes for the rest of my life. Watching them work still gives me a thrill," he says. 

Dr. Lundy with Aleutian Water Spray in 1951 in Sun Valley.

"Then in 1948, I was asked to give a talk about hunting dogs at the Owyhee Hotel in Boise. 'When I was finished, a man who had been in the audience approached me and introduced himmself as Claude Bekins. He was the owner of Bekins Van Lines. He invited me to come to Portland, Oregon, to watch a retriever field trial. 

"I was really impressed with the competition and the quality of the dog work that I saw at that trial. It wasn't long after that, that we started the Idaho Retriever Club. I really still didn't know much about training my dogs, so I read everything I could lay my hands on about training retrievers. I certainly didn't know anything about teaching a dog to run blind retrieves and cast. But I realized that I could teach my dog to cast in a sand pit, and because they had so much natural retrieving ability, they caught on to it really quickly. 

"It was only a few years later that  I bred the litter that Atom Bob came from. It certainly wasn't that I was a great trainer; he just had more natural ability and just understood what I asked him to do better than just about any other dog I have ever had. He was certainly my 'dog of a lifetime.' Over his career, he won more than a hundred ribbons and eighty trophies in the field trials. He qualified for four National Amateurs and three National Open Retriever Trials and won the Chesapeake National Specialty three times and finished second twice. And he sure sired some great dogs such as another dog I had named The Big Fellow who was also one of my alltime favorite hunting dogs. 

Cpt. John Lundy with Lt. Crutchfield and Peggy in 1944. She was a regular pal in the P-38 during missions.

"Let me tell you a story about what happened one time when I was hunting with Big Fellow up near Brownlee Reservoir. Another guy and I were hunting chukars. And you know what it's like up there on the Oregon side of the lake - only a damn billy goat could get around easily on those steep rocks and cliffs. My hunting partner shot a chukar, and it went down over the edge; but then we watched as it circled back to the side toward the hill. Well, Big Fellow went over the edge after the bird. He went down about three hundred yards through those rocks and into the water. By the time I could get close enough to try to call him back, he was about five hundred yards out in the water, swimming across the lake looking for that bird. He was so far away, and because of the cliffs and echoes up there, I don't think he could hear my whistle. I thought he was lost and we'd never find him. I knew it was a long way by land to the other side of the lake, but I had to find a way to get over there to try to get him. 

"A couple of hours later as we were working our way around the lake, my wife was driving down the road coming to pick us up and she saw the dog trotting along the road and loaded him up. I have never been so scared of what the outcome might have been. Damn, I was glad to see that dog. 

"Here's another hunting story. I J think it was the fall of 1960 when  I got a phone call from a fraternity  brother of mine, Bud Purdy, who was 1 a rancher over in the Sun Valley area. 

[Bud Purdy was a rancher in the Wood River Valley area of Idaho and 
a close friend and hunting companion of Ernest Hemingway.] Bud said that he wanted to come down and bring a friend and asked if I would take them duck hunting. When they arrived, Bud's friend was none other than Gary Cooper. I took Gary Cooper and Bud down on Crow Island in the Snake River for a couple of days of duck shooting. What a regular and good guy Gary Cooper was to have around and a damn good duck hunter; he loved watching the dogs work. Sadly, Gary Cooper died of cancer the following spring." 

Dr. Lundy isn't name-dropping when he casually tells these stories about some of the people he has hunted with. Or of the men with whom he did dog trials such as legendary trainer Charles Morgan - who Lundy says "always had a Chesapeake sitting on the seat of his truck beside him" - and Andy Devine who was a regular gunner at their field trials many years back. The same goes when he speaks of his very long friendships with the late billionaire, J.R. Simplot, and grocery magnate, Joe Albertson. Among themselves, they were ordinary men, and Lundy still thinks of himself as an ordinary man. His simple passion for hunting and dogs led him to interact with these moguls of history. 

"You know, we sure had some great hunting trips when there were lots of birds around, but I still go hunting as often as I can. And, I'm still a hell of a good shot," he tells me. "But then again, how could I not be a good shot when all I do pretty much anymore is jumpshoot ditches. I make my dog sit, the ducks jump up, and I shoot them at about 25 or 30 yards as they flyaway! Then I send my dog to get them. I get some shooting, and I get some pretty good dog work. What more could a fellow ask for?" 

Dr. Lundy could have continued with his hunting and dog stories for hours - and I could have listened for hours. He has judged well over 100 field trials and has judged the National Open Championship once and the National Amateur Championship twice. He served as President of the American Chesapeake Club twice for five years, and he served one term as President of the National Amateur Retriever Club. 

In February 2003, Dr. John Lundy was inducted into the Retriever Field Trial Hall of Fame. He is one of only a handful of people in the Hall of Fame who also have a dog (FC AFC Atom Bob, elected in 1994) enshrined in the Hall of Fame. "But I have to mention that over all of the years of hunting and dog trials, these dogs have certainly done a lot more for me than I could ever do for them," he says. 

"And one more thing I want you to tell everyone my philosophy of life - my motto. I kind of stole this from one of the greatest basketball coaches of all time, John Wooden. He was the coach at UCLA, and I graduated from USC. There is no love lost between those two schools, but Coach Wooden is a great man and was a great coach. Now be sure and write this down because I want everyone to know: 'Never let anything you can't do interfere with what you can do.''' 

I think anyone who knows John Lundy would agree that philosophy has served him well through the years. To Dr. Lundy: Congratulations on 91 great years and thanks for all that you have done for the dogs and for the legacy you have provided.