Everybody says so.

Sigh!

I put the "Girls" (and Sammie) out in the "back yard" yesterday for a little exercise with the pasture rabbit. They trailed a long way, alternating their calls to each other as they respectively reacquired the track.
Just before, they put the bunny to flight, I heard "Aren't you just a cutiepie" from the direction of the neighbor's parents house.
I leaned against a pine and watched as the buck rabbit scooted under the barbed wire fence and down the draw leading to the pond. He was closely followed in order by Penny, Katie, Sally, with Lucy and Sissy running side by side.
Sally and Sissy weren't making a sound and both were running with their heads up.
There was no sign of Samuel P. Thumbsucker.


The race went up the draw only fifty yards before the rabbit circled back to the overgrown neighbor's pasture where he had been jumped. Sammie came racing from the direction of the pond. Since I know that he had been across the property line before the "Girls" had jumped, I figured that he had stopped to get some attention from the neighbor lady before taking a easier path to catch the "Girls".
Two more tight circles and they lost him.

I walked the "Girls" (and Sammie) up to the pond to see if the rabbit that I saw most mornings was still hanging out in the really thick willows. I pulled up 2's chair that he keeps on the dam as the "Girls" (and Sammie) hunted quietly in the "thick". It went from dead quite to a roar as the "Girls" (and Sammie) jumped. The race went down the draw then hooked right on the thin fringe of brush towards my back line. Katie was hammering with the pack, so I pushed aside the uneasy feeling about the unusual track.

Then Katie shut up. Lucy and Penny kept hammering on. I saw Katie followed by the pups came back towards the bottom where all the excitement started. The sound of Lucy and Penny faded as they headed towards 166.

I put Katie and the pups up, giving them a biscuit for their mornings work.

I worked on removing the kitchen countertops in preparation for the crew to come in and install the new laminates on Thursday. GF had wanted the reconstituted rock but because of the large amount of counters in the kitchen, the cost was to high. That was one of the main reasons I was removing the old tops myself. They wanted several hundred dollars to do it.
Watching out the window, expecting to see Penny and Lucy trotting across the back pasture any minute, I pried and hammered at the old laminate tops, trying to expose the screws that held the tops in place.
By mid-afternoon, I figured that Lucy had convinced Penny that since they were already in trouble they may as well make a day of it. Uncle NoPass would have said they were "lost". That was his way of politely saying that they were running trash without having to admit his pride and joys would do something so despicable. After all, "everybody said his were the best dogs in these parts. Why they wouldn't run nothing but a rabbit. Everybody says so."

I took a ride on the side roads looking for them, but saw and heard nothing.

The sun was sinking towards the far treeline of the back pasture while I fed the critters that are beginning to populate "Rabbit Run" when I heard Lucy's bark. Listening closer, I heard Penny chime in. They were a half mile up the road running on the property of a "late" member of the church where I worship.
GF and I rode up the narrow rutted path, overgrown with summer weeds, listening to the wayward girls running a rabbit near a mostly drylake. I called and Penny popped out first. Lucy took some coaxing, but she finally came out. And promptly laid down and rolled over, forcing me to pick her up.
I chastised them, but don't think that it did much good. They were sharing happy, but tired looks