growing up, we always had brittany spaniels. i cannot tell you how many brids they would bring up to the house with them when it was time to come inside. this was just in our suburban backyard too, they would grab the low flying birds from the air sometimes too. it was pretty incredable. one thing with them though is they get separation anxiety fairly bad if you are gone alot, or at least ours did. course, they were house dogs, not outside dogs. We did some hunting with them, but not too much. i will say this though, our boy brittany actually jumped through a screen to get a squirrel that was on a tree. he forgot he was on the second floor though, and fell down and luckily landed on our hot tub hard cover. he was fine though, but as determined as ever to get that squirrel out of the tree. by the way, they are high energy dogs and need to be excercised quite a bit.
As i have gotten older though, my wife and i have chosen to work with beagles. they are great dogs, and have excellent dispositons IMHO. They can be a bit hyper though, so it is best to work with them as much as possible. i like the 15" beagles the best for running game like deer. the 13" is nice for rabbit.
Anyway, many dogs will work for you, and any 2 dogs are better than none, well most of the time. so try out a couple pups.
