The vegetation was pretty thick on the small farm we hunted yesterday.
What had been pleasant orchard grass two months ago was now a thick tangle of Japanese hops and hemlock mixed with poison ivy and milk weed.
Paul was out with me. He is new to the area and down from Texas where he used to run feral hogs with a Dogo Argentino. This was going to be a bit different for him! On the upside, he's a really nice guy and is built for digging. I love that! My goal in life is to move up from the labor pool to "supervising manager," like Jocelyn Lucas, the man who worked his dogs with half a dozen diggers in tow. In a tweedy voice, I will point to a patch of dirt and suggest digging there.
I can dream, can't I?
The day started off well. We were not very far down the creek before Mountain went to ground. She killed a possum in the pipe, and Gideon helped her pull it from the hole. A no-dig situation. In truth, I normally try to release possums, but the dogs are not always very cooperative on that score.
The dogs marked a groundhog a bit farther along, and after a bit of digging, we were on top of it.
Gideon kept it bottled, while I finished telling a story (first things first!) and then we dispatched it and filled in the hole.
When Gideon has a groundhog in a very good position, I am not always in a rush to get things sorted out. It's good for a dog to hold and bay the quarry at the end of a stop pipe -- the code explodes inside the dog, and reinforces the behavior you are trying to teach. The dog is having fun, and the critter is OK where it is too. No harm is being done, and quite a lot of good is coming to fruit inside the dog.
After a quick and simple dispatch, Paul and I walked down the creek and we lost Gideon in the high stuff. The dogs are always going in and out of the hedges and banks. No worries. I assumed Gideon would come along in short order.
Paul and I crossed the creek with Mountain just ahead of us, and we soon found another groundhog which we dug to and dispatched in short order. I was getting pretty hot!
Mountain marked a fourth hole just up the bank, and we started to dig to the point that I realized this sette went deep. Mountain was tired, and I was starting to fray from the heat (85 degrees in the shade, not that there was any shade), and we decided to call it a day.
Now where was Gideon?
Long story short, we walked every inch of that small farm and drove it with the Gator too, and we never found Gideon.
More that six hours after we lost him, he came walking slowly up the mow path to the farmer's house -- very tired, but otherwise unharmed.
Gideon had clearly been underground working the whole time, as he was bone tired and fell asleep within a minute or two of being put up in the crate.
I suspect he had been working a raccoon, as a groundhog would have dug away in the soft soil, a fox will bolt, and a possum would have been sent to Valhalla. A raccoon, however, makes a lot of noise and cannot dig away, and as a consequence my dogs will tend to stay forever. If a raccoon had gotten far enough up a very tight dirt pipe, Gideon might struggle to reach it without actually baying, which is what I suspect happened here.
I was, of course, beyond happy to have Gideon back. I had been more than a little worried. Gideon was without mark other than the place on his nose where some fur had been lost due to a recent spot of mange.
Both dogs, of course, got a good warm bath when they got home. This morning they are both a bit creaky, but Mountain is the stiffer of the two. At her age, and mine, we fade a bit faster and take a little longer to bounce back. Gideon, of course, is a bit sore too. No surprise there!
Losing eye contact with a dog in the field is an occupational hazard where I hunt. These are not mowed fields, but thick hedgerows bordering corn, soy, twisting creek bottoms, and fallen timber, with poison ivy, Virginia creeper, and multiflora rose covering all.
I have never lost a dog overnight, and this is only the second time it has taken a dog more than two hours to show up -- and yes, it was on this same small farm!.
I think falconers, hog and bear dog men, and those who run working terriers all have to make peace with the Great Unknown, which is the fact that when the crate is opened, and the tail gate drops, we cannot always be sure our well-loved animals will be back with us at night.
Small injuries, of course, are par for the course -- squirrel-bit talons, smashed feathers, ripped muzzles, barbed wire scrapes, and cut pads. Such stuff may take two or three weeks to heal, but they are part of the hunt and are fully recoverable.
The Big Fear is not small injury -- it is the specter of complete loss; the bird that flies over the horizon never looking back, the dog that goes to ground unseen and never reappears, or the dog that runs up the mountain and never comes down again.
The good news is that such things are rare in the world of working terriers.
My dogs hunt with two collars on them, each with a slide tag engraved with my cell phone, home phone, and web site address. The dogs are micro-chipped as well. If a person finds my dogs, the human in that equation can certainly find me fast!
But there is always the Great Unknown. We all hope to never meet it, and so far I never have.
But you have to make peace with it. You have to learn to quiet your heart and numb your brain a bit.
Do not project.
Do not give up.
And remember that there is always more to life than longevity.
My dogs have spent years facing risk in the field, and they have always come out OK. But if, on some occasion they do not, there is the very small comfort that my dogs have lived fully self-actualized lives.
They have been outside the fence. They have been off the leash.
When my dogs dream, they do not dream as rabbits, but as half-wild wolves.
They do not dream of the fireplace, but of the field.
And, above all, they know they have been loved, all their lives, for who they truly are -- hunting dogs born for field and forest, hedgerow and hole.
On the mornings I load up the truck, the dogs are not interested in food. They bounce on the driveway, so eager are they to have me pick them up and put them in their boxes for a run to the farms.
These are dogs that live, and are loved. We will all die, but not all of us will be able to say that, even in old age!
I think falconers, hog and bear dog men, and those who run working terriers all have to make peace with the Great Unknown, which is the fact that when the crate is opened, and the tail gate drops, we cannot always be sure our well-loved animals will be back with us at night.
Small injuries, of course, are par for the course -- squirrel-bit talons, smashed feathers, ripped muzzles, barbed wire scrapes, and cut pads. Such stuff may take two or three weeks to heal, but they are part of the hunt and are fully recoverable.
The Big Fear is not small injury -- it is the specter of complete loss; the bird that flies over the horizon never looking back, the dog that goes to ground unseen and never reappears, or the dog that runs up the mountain and never comes down again.
The good news is that such things are rare in the world of working terriers.
My dogs hunt with two collars on them, each with a slide tag engraved with my cell phone, home phone, and web site address. The dogs are micro-chipped as well. If a person finds my dogs, the human in that equation can certainly find me fast!
But there is always the Great Unknown. We all hope to never meet it, and so far I never have.
But you have to make peace with it. You have to learn to quiet your heart and numb your brain a bit.
Do not project.
Do not give up.
And remember that there is always more to life than longevity.
My dogs have spent years facing risk in the field, and they have always come out OK. But if, on some occasion they do not, there is the very small comfort that my dogs have lived fully self-actualized lives.
They have been outside the fence. They have been off the leash.
When my dogs dream, they do not dream as rabbits, but as half-wild wolves.
They do not dream of the fireplace, but of the field.
And, above all, they know they have been loved, all their lives, for who they truly are -- hunting dogs born for field and forest, hedgerow and hole.
On the mornings I load up the truck, the dogs are not interested in food. They bounce on the driveway, so eager are they to have me pick them up and put them in their boxes for a run to the farms.
These are dogs that live, and are loved. We will all die, but not all of us will be able to say that, even in old age!
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