Review: a Good Man With a Dog

 A Good Man with a Dog: A Game Warden's 25 Years in the Maine Woods
    by Roger Guay

Good Dog!  And good dogs! And a great book.

Mr. Guay recalls his 25-ish years as a game warden in the Maine Woods, and it's a wild and crazy ride.  At first he tells his "normal" game warden stories--the fish hidden in the duffle, the doe permit episode; the many nights of skulking along the shore of a pond in search of a mysterious searchlight. And many episodes where he is able to educate the public, and their children--quite lovely. And then he moves on to his increasing work in the search-and-rescue field.

Somewhere in there he learns how useful a dog can be. His well-trained dogs can distinguish between game fish and trash fish; find discarded shotgun shells; track down hidden caches.... It's a blast.

I have to warn you that the widespread use of snowmobiles in the woods takes a lot of the joy out of his mission. Instead of educating hunters and enforcing game rules, he's tracking down drunks who take off cross-country in the cold and dark forests. It takes up more and more of his time.

But then he trains a cadaver dog and gets into rescue after floods and explosions. Grisly, miserable, and mostly unrewarding work. But the whole book is still fascinating to the max.

Highly recommended. And a lot of scary action scenes, too.