I’m glad to have got your note. Air conditioning has just about ruined this Alabama boy. Yeah, I’m going to run the girls Saturday morning. Come on down. I put them out about 6.

Unfortunately, djmed didn’t respond, so I had to drop him this note.
Shame you didn’t make it. Had one really good race and a couple of sputter’s. The grounds really dry and the pine needles crumble beneath your feet. There’s No moisture to hold the scent.

Yeah, I know. I ought to be whupped for not posting. Hot and dry as blazes outside, so I don’t have any excuse for not posting the last few exercises the girls and I have been on. It’s been so dry here on the mid east Alabama/Georgia border that I didn’t pop a single firecracker. That would have just been asking for trouble. I’ve got several “pans” set out. I carry a five gallon jerry can of water for the “girls” and pour the excess into the pans for the animals

The “Girls”, Judy, Dixie, Kate and Lucy, and I have been hitting Seale before 6 a.m. every Saturday except when the Pathfinder was down with that defective heat sensor. Plenty of rabbits, djmed. Especially in the back past my long ignored camping cache.

I’ve been “working my way towards the front, saving the areas near the pavement for wet conditions. I don’t have any fear that the Pathfinder couldn’t handle it, it’s just such a hassle to wash all that sticky Alabama clay out from under it.

Lots of rabbits. I’ve been seeing rabbits just trying to get out of the way as the dogs run another. Listen to me now. Come hunting season and we probably couldn’t buy a rabbit back there. …

The closest I’ve been to hunting the front was when Ruby, escorted by Mark and Susie, came and we ran the sand pit back to the cabins. Speaking of Mark, I ain’t heard from him in a good while. I suppose he’s still jet-setting. I hope Ruby is doing good in the rabbit school Mark was supposed to have sent her

Dixie caught a rabbit a couple of Saturday’s back. Lucy, who is developing a phenomenal nose, kept insisting there was a rabbit on a clean hillside under tall pines. Nothing but pine straw and scraggly briars. The rabbit held until Lucy’s nose almost touched it’s butt. Dixie saw the rabbit when it broke. Three bounds with the rabbit hemmed in on the sides by Julie and Kate….

Lucy’s nose continues to impress me though it was Dixie that was last out, trailing a good twenty minutes bhind the other hounds.

I had made up my mind to run the north property line, walking west to east on the old, old logging trail. Usually at that time of the morning Tiny and Mikie would be on the lakes in Pittsview fishing in the relative cool of our mid July Alabama mornings, but today it was Tiny and Cuz’s Boy trucks still in the “yards”. The cabin rabbit sat in the turnaround. I thought long and hard about setting the dogs out. Last time, they ran the rabbit under the cabin and followed it under. But I decided to show the “under the weather” a little mercy, besides not enough young bucks sleeping it off….yet. Besides, I wanted to walk some areas that I usually don’t go through.

Anyway, we were headed back along the line when Lucy announced the presence of a rabbit. The pack ran a good 45 minute race crossing, back and forth over the line before losing the trail.

The girls got two short races going back at the old pathfinder. One was the cabin rabbit, but by then, Tiny, Cuz’s Boy and Cuz’s Boy’s boy were up and moving.

I’ll be running them again next Saturday if you want to come. With the time change, you’d be back home cooking a brunch by 9.