The 16-minute film “A Bird Dog Named Kaiya” premiered at the Pheasants Forever Film Festival in 2023. It tells an uncommon tale of comradery across several generations of dogs and hunters both.

The film tracks Keng Yang, through the arc of his youth and eventual adulthood, as he negotiates some of life’s difficult moral and ethical challenges. Keng grew up opposed to the subsistence hunting his father and uncles did back in Laos, until Keng adopted his father’s dog Kaiya.

Kaiya’s drive to hunt, and Keng’s gradual acceptance of hunting, brings a conservation purpose to aspects of his own culture that he pushed away in his childhood. That coming of age mends fences, and ultimately grows hunter and dog, father and son, in a direction that would have seemed impossible mere seasons earlier.

Enjoy the story of Keng and Kaiya.