Jeffery Deaver fans will recognize in this post title the name of the central character of many Jeffery Deaver novels, forensic crime-solving superstar, Lincoln Rhyme (movie goers saw him portrayed by Denzel Washington in the movie, “The Bone Collector”).  At a crime scene, ‘walking the grid’ is one of Lincoln Rhyme’s first orders of business, a method in which a search for evidence is done from one end of an area to the other in a grid system, first in one direction, then the other, and then twice more, but from a 45 degree angle.

In hunting dog terms, “quartering” is a bit like “walking the grid.” The dog performs a back-and-forth “windshield wiper” movement as it hunts in front of the hunger, its purpose to thoroughly and effectively search a piece of ground, and to keep the dog within shotgun range so that anything he flushes can be shot.

Quartering can be taught, but it is the forte of the hunting Springers and Spaniels. We’ve read that to the person who shoots over these dogs, there’s nothing more beautiful than to see a dog working rough ground with speed, style and grace. That said, teaching a dog to quarter its ground has been described as “soul-destroying and frustrating” if the dog isn’t bred for the job. Can we hear it for “predictability?”

As an aside, Jeffery Deaver is a purebred dog fancier. His Briards have won Best of Breed at Westminster twice, and various dogs occasionally show up in his books (a Briard was included in his novel “Roadside Crosses”). Deaver has even auctioned off characters for his novels, proceeds going to the American Kennel Club’s Canine Health Foundation (CHIC). In one such auction, the winning bidder asked that her Havanese appear as a police dog. Somehow, Deaver made it work.

Irish Red and White Setter thought to be by Heywood Hardy and more information forthcoming once we’re in receipt of information