Those are pretty dogs. My cousin had one and she was a bit hyperactive as you said. I don't know if they ever bird hunted with her but she probably felt like a part of it when they were shooting birds in their orchard. Good loyal dog. For selfish reasons I wish you well soon my friend. Your writing helps feed my restless mind.
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He is an extremely beautiful dog. When he's cantering along (best I can describe his gait) the extra fur on the backs of his legs, top of his head, and tail, stream back like feathers, or movement indicators in a drawing. I describe it but poorly, as it is such an aesthetically pleasing sight. When at rest, and regarding you with those beautiful eyes, the little curly mop top looks like a perm. He's just pretty. More importantly, he's extremely good natured, and anxious to be of service - just too energized to walk along at the glacial pace of mere humans.
He's got to flow, and I've been successful at getting labs to proudly strut along at heel, but he's so irrepressible that when within 'striking distance' of the object of his desire (something to smell or pee on) he leaps to it enthusiastically - which will knock you on your ass if you're attached to the other end of a leash.
After his terrible stroke, and the continuing exacerbating problems Tom has been undergoing for the last month, Tom will never be able to walk him as I'd hoped to make possible by training Bear to heel. I am not a professional trainer, and don't have the time to become one as I have literally been working without days off since the doctors lifted my work restriction. Even now that they insist I take days off, two days a week isn't going to suffice.
Training him to sniff out game birds and retrieve them will fulfill his destiny. It's uncanny to see his natural behaviour prefigure what he should be trained to do as a gundog.
Thanks!
Edit: the restless mind syndrome is why I write, too. That is the essential feature of the kinds of folks I reckon do find my posts valuable, and why of all the debilitations of age I dislike, it is that incipient dementia, the loss of vocabulary; that feeling incessantly that the right word is just at the tip of your tongue, almost sorted out of the whirlwind of possibilities in your mind, that inability to write good prose I dread most.
When anxiety over the last couple days rose like bile in my gorge, from the decree of my doctors that I could no longer revel in the full deployment of my strength of arm and endurance at work, I noted that happening. My PTSD makes such anxiety worse, and I had to reach out for succor to a dear friend with soothing advice when I forgot the names of the doctors I had just seen in my stressed condition.
After a bit of hearing their monologue advising acceptance of reality, I remembered them. It is a strange connection between anxiety and dementia I shall have to contend with. My writing may not remain as useful to us should I fail to accept the ravages of fate with good grace, it seems. I shall exercise the ultimate weapon against anxiety, humility, to the best of my ability in the hope of retaining the fragments of my mind as long as possible.