A ROUGH-SHOOTING DOG: The First Season of...

A ROUGH-SHOOTING DOG: The First Season of a Hunting Spaniel by Charles Fergus, illustrated by Joe Fornelli (Doubleday: $12.95; 242 pp.). In this amicable memoir, Charles Fergus recounts how he trained Jenny, a springer spaniel pup, to hunt the game birds that inhabit the central Pennsylvania woods. His affectionate descriptions of the special bond that exists between man and dog will win over even readers who dislike hunting. For Fergus, a hunt is a way of obtaining food and communing with nature and Jenny, rather than an excuse to drink and bag “trophies”: “Hunting is a path, a muddy, brushy, dank, and spoor-written path along which the seeker, if his spirit be right, can truly feel the earth. If he is fortunate, he travels with a true dog and a true friend.”