Champion Bird Dog Helps Heal Trainer's Heart Condition

One of the country's foremost field trial competitors has revealed to Yahoo! Music why he credits bird dogs with saving his life. In 2006, Steve Hurdle won the pinnacle event of pointing-breed competition—the National Bird Dog Field Trial at Tennessee's Ames Plantation—with pointer Shell Creek Coin. But, according to Yahoo!, just minutes after learning he'd won, Hurdle collapsed with chest pains (doctors later determined he suffered an aortic aneurism).

Paramedics predicted Hurdle would not survive, but after surgery and being given 44 pints of blood, he was on the mend—with a little help from his dogs. Hurdle tells Yahoo! that he credits the exercise achieved through training dogs with helping him regain his health. In 2012, Hurdle again won the National Field Trial, this time with a pointer named Connor's Button.

Many of us may feel that dogs add to our health, our enjoyment of the day-to-day and perhaps even add a few years to our lives. For Hurdle, this is true in a more literal sense.