“Come on, Lucy. It’s almost 10:30 and it’s getting hot.”

“Wait Boss. There’s a rabbit here. I know there is. I can smell him.”

Julie and Dixie ran over to Lucy’s barking and stopped. They looked longingly back at the Pathfinder before half heartedly putting their nose to the ground. I could tell they smelled the rabbit, but the scent wasn’t strong enough and they ran back to me.
“Nope, no rabbit, Boss. Lets go."

Lucy, if I can keep her off of deer, is going to be phenomenal.
Ever since she trailed her first bunny at the age of 12 weeks, Lucy’s nose has done nothing but impress me. I keep the collar on her, hoping she won’t run a deer but hoping she does.
What the heck does that mean?
If she’s going to run one I want to catch her red-handed and break her once and for all. So far, she’s had the benefit of the doubt.

Four o’clock in the morning comes early….about four o’clock. I stumbled into the kitchen and clicked o the coffee pot. I need my mother’s milk if I want to function that early in the morning. The air was still warm in the early morning darkness as Lucy’s barking greeted me. The other hounds excitedly bounced around the gate.

I met Tiny near the gate on his way to the lakes in Pittsview. Tiny manages a set of private lakes that make up a fishing club and spends most weekends on the water. One Saturday, I might go with him. We chatted for a few moments each in our own vehicle before heading off in different directions to do the things we love.

The first race started in the narrow bottom before my camping cache. As usual, Lucy was the first to start barking. Then Julie's high pitched squeal, reminiscent of a man with his private's caught in a set of vice grips, followed closely by Dixie's deeper yodel and finally, Kate. The dogs trailed down the trash hardwood bottom, vines dangling from some trees, other vines rigidly climbing. The climbers are the ones that I hang up on most often. The danglers are a mere annoyance. Then it was up the opposite pine hill, clean of most everything besides pine straw. The excited calls slowly fading out, not because of distance but …..

The race hadn’t sounded right from the start. I believe that the pack lead by Lucy had backtracked the rabbit till they had lost the scent. I followed along and tried to lead the dogs to back in the direction of where I suspected the rabbit had headed. It was where I had spent so much time last year tying to ambush a big buck that haunted the edge of the hill and bottom.

Lucy soon announced the presence of another scent. I didn’t hear the other dogs as Lucy got more and more insistent. Then that growling quality that announces a blistering hot track crept into her ugly yard dog bark. A bark that she inherited from her weiner (dachshund) dog side of the family. Still no other dogs joined in.

I heard a rustling and Julie showed up running from the opposite direction. The dogs had split up looking for a rabbit. Julie stopped and said “Hidey” as Lucy, if possible, became even more insistent. Julie listened for a moment before racing in Lucy’s direction. Soon her voice joined in as they race to the top of the hillside. Then it was over the top, voices not fading till I heard Kate and Dixie going along.

I listened as they made a large circle before topping the hill again and dropping off into a thick bottom that ran along the property line.
They ran that rabbit from 7 till almost 9:30. I stood on the line, not wanting to cross onto someone else’s property till I finally decided that there was no quit in them today.

Dixie followed by Kate were the first two to break off and come to my calls. Lucy, then Julie followed a good five minutes later.

We speed walked up out of the bottom across the long hillside to the pathfinder and the only water near. The dogs cooled down and I was getting ready to put them into the box, when Lucy started in on the rabbit that Dixie and Julie said wasn’t there, only the scent which they said was old enough to qualify as a fossil.
Lucy saying she would set up at the pathfinder with us old farts when she couldn’t run with the big dogs anymore continued to trail for another 15 minutes.

She’s gonna be a good one. Everybody says so