Ok, not really.

The dogs ran well. Top dog? Once again it was Lucy. Dixie, Julie and Kate turning in solid performances as supporting casts though they really shine once the race starts. Abbie? Well, Abbie is still a puppy.

Lucy’s forte is starting the race by finding a weak scent and following it until she jumps or it becomes so strong that the other little ladies follow it. Lucy, despite being, or maybe because, a mutt has the best nose with a ugly yard dog bark that a growling quality slips into when the track becomes hot. Besides a slight tendency to chase the occasional deer, she has developed another bad habit. She exhibited it during one of the middle races Saturday. Julie, Dixie and Kate found a rabbit in some really thick cover in a tight bottom before the sandpit and started running hot. When Lucy, some distance off, heard them she sounded off while racing in their direction. I saw Julie and Dixie pause almost like they were weighing going to help her on “her” rabbit. Then their better sense of a rabbit in their thicket was better than two of whatever Lucy was running.

Dixie,
with her three pack a day smokers cough, is my favorite since Maizie passed. The cough isn’t contagious. She’s been to Doc Caldwell a couple of times, but whatever is wrong with her doesn’t respond to antibiotics. She’s had the cough for several months now, but runs and eats well with no weight loss.
Lucy tracks step by step. While Lucy says “ok he stepped here and then here, then….. Where did he go then?”, Dixie stops and starts cutting big circles trying to hit the hot trail. This tactic works often enough for her to continue employing it though not every time.

I watched one rabbit making big jumps across a opening of light brush before disappearing. Abbie and I walked down to where I had seen the rabbit while her Aunties, having lost the rabbit they were running in what looked to be an open area of large pines that was in reality filled with brush between six and ten foot, searched for the track. Abbie smelled along the trail for a short distance before deciding that trying to catch a June bug was more fun. I waited till she got a short distance off and pulled the .22 pocket rocket and fired a shot into the ground behind my back. Abbie just stopped and stared in my direction before coming back to see what I was doing making all that racket. Her Aunties, hearing the shot and probably remembering my poor shot record during the last hunting season hurried to us, no doubt to chase the unhurt rabbit.
Julie, Dixie and Lucy smelled the track and began searching for the rabbit. Dixie started her circles but had to break off and rush back to help when the rabbit broke from a small brush pile, only feet away from where I fired the shot. It was pushed out by Lucy smelling a track at a time. In other words, cutting the big circle doesn’t help when the bunny sits tight.

But it still doesn’t matter. Dixie is still my current favorite though not the best. She is a beautifully marked dog with jagged streaks up her rear flanks, a soft coat and loving, wanting to please, disposition.

Julie has the best voice, a high pitched squeal that is reminiscent of a man with his privates caught in a pair of vise grips. When there is a deer in the area, Julie arrives at my feet, usually in the company of Dixie. When Lucy sounds off and I see those two heading towards me, I know that Lucy is up to no good. Julie hunts good though she tends to run out of steam ¾ through the day. One of her idiosyncrasies, is that she is deathly afraid of thunderstorms. So afraid that she won’t eat, even when the storm is only a vague ache in my joints. She starts dancing at my feet trying to get my attention to the fact we’re all gonna die during the storm.

Kate has really come along.

She’s the fastest dog in the pack with a bull chest and very little white; to little in my humble opinion. Uncle NoPass’s last puppy, she stayed in Uncle NoPass’s pen during the last few years of his life. Brag, Uncle NoPass’s grandson, and I tried to take her out a few times, but he got it in his head that someone was trying to steal the best rabbit dog in these parts. Why, she wouldn’t run nothing but a rabbit, everybody said so.
The sad truth was Kate was green with a tendency to run deer. Just no one had the nerve to say that to his face. Brag and I have ran her with the collar on and she doesn’t run deer anymore. Her biggest bad habit was that she shortcutted the rabbit. That means she broke off the trail and tried to intercept the rabbit where she thought it was heading. I haven’t noticed her doing that as much this summer, so maybe she quit that habit like she did deer. I have noticed that at lunch, she thinks it’s time to go home. I’m wondering if I’m spoiling the dogs with these four and five hour runs. When the season gets here, “it’s can to can’t.”

Abbie is still being a puppy. She smelled along a few fresh rabbit trails on Saturday.
On the last one, she seemed to really getting into it. Then she turned looking to see if I was coming along. When I didn’t come, she laid on the trail till her Aunties came along the track, then she jumped up and ran with them for twenty five or so yards before coming back to see where I was.
This trip she went with them more often if not for further distances. I think she’ll do well as she gets older.

Special thanks to Redoubt over at Sin City and Q for editing the pics for me