Sugar got introduced to the electric pine limb last evening.
And she found it to be a shocking experience.
Heh

She’s worn the shock collar before but has never experienced its effect till yesterday afternoon. See, Sugar has turned into a howler along with her other quirks and neurosis. And the bad thing is she fires up Julie, Maizie and Dixie. The sounds, the four happy @$$holes make in their pen when the neighbors cat decides to take a sloooooow evening stroll past, are pretty much the sounds they make when they run a rabbit. And that sound, my friends, is music to my ears. Except for Julies squeal on an extremely hot track. That sounds more like a guy with his privates caught in a pair of vise grips and explains some of my finest shots. I was shuddering so bad I sprayed the rabbit rather than shot at him. But alas not all my neighbors have the fine cultured taste that I have in music and this isn’t that music, anyway. But it is a truly and awesome sound when you have four beagles reaching for the high notes, cascading over each other reaching ever higher. Sugar started howling only when I went inside the house after my evening visit to the dog pen. This time I was ready, I held the transmitter in my hand hidden from sight as I watched the dog pen. As I watched, Sugar lifted her head and pointed her muzzle skywards. When the first quavering notes arrived, I hit the orange button. With the dial set on 4 out of a potential 8, the effect was a total cartoon. Sugar seemed to be in three places at once. I could see her nose still lifted to the sky and her halfway across the pen and her butt as she disappeared around the doghouse.
All at once.
She hasn’t howled since, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before she tests the system again.

The hired help and I pulled up at Rye’s house close to seven this morning. He was waiting and only a few minutes had passed before we had loaded Cuz’s dog Judy and were on our way to Seale. Judy is one of the finest rabbit dogs I know, but is really showing her age. The shame is that I don’t see any replacement legends on the way up as Judy goes down.

“Deer” Rye shouted even though I was setting next to him in the drivers seat of the old pathfinder. He probably felt he had to yell to be heard over the hole in the muffler and my own notoriously bad hearing. Four does shot across the logging road. After stopping the pathfinder, Rye and I set Sugar and Dixie, who was wearing the other collar, on the ground. They walked forward, head high, sniffing the air. Both dogs turned, yelping excitedly as they set off on the deer’s path. They ran for a hundred yards, bawling the whole way till I lit the both of them up. There were stunned howls of pain and then total silence. ” Think you killed them?” Rye asked after a minute or so. The two dog’s came back out on the road looking back over their shoulder, no doubt wondering what had hit them. I don’t want them to wonder, I want them to know….that it was the deer.

“Next to the cabin “ I whispered to Rye. I must have been whispering to keep the rabbit, who was only 10 yards away from hearing me over the rumbling of the loud leaky exhaust of the pathfinder. The grass swirled as the rabbit disappeared while thinking ”not again”

All five ladies opened up and ran the rabbit in two tight circles. I saw him both times as he completed the circle, easy shots both. The sounds were wonderful. Five little lady beagle in full cry, the sounds boiling up and out of the small area that the rabbit always ran…. before they lost him where they have for the last three trips.

The next two races were large circles like a big buck rabbit might run. Or maybe a yearling deer. I wouldn’t use the collars without seeing the deer and neither Rye nor myself saw what they were running. Rye said “See Judy isn’t chasing it . It has to be a deer“. But I thought that Judy was showing her age And the effects of being in her pen for the last six months. My four ladies got the benefit of the doubt on that race and the one that followed.

All in all, a good day. I plan to run them again this weekend. I don’t have much time, the season is coming.