make her first mistake of the season. The rabbit came down the edge of the oaks from the three o’clock position to the nine o’clock before making a series of long jumps back to the five o’clock position. It froze slightly to my right as it either saw or sensed me. I think it’s intention was to race away to the six o’clock direction dead away from the girls who were hot on his track. I had spoiled that plan and he shot back towards the eight o’clock.

Kate, when Brag and I first inherited her from Uncle NoPass, had a bad habit of shortcutting the rabbit. In other words she tried to anticipate where the rabbit was going and try to head it off. She didn’t need to, she’s the fastest dog in the pack and generally in the lead till she overruns the trail.
She had been doing better, but this time, I watched as she came out of the thick brush at the 12 o’clock position, crying like she was on the trail when I had just watched the rabbit come from my hard right.
As soon as she hit the trial, she took off on the back trail and ran headlong into the rest of The Rabbit Journal Pack. The race broke up for a few minutes as the girls milled around trying to reacquire the trail.

I watched as little Mystery came back down the trail, only yards from sorting the problem out when Suzie shot past her, nose to the ground, and the race was back on.

The cool air of dawn with the vegetation wet with morning dew, was pleasant before the late morning heat up.

We didn’t drive very far in this morning, only to the first turnaround.
I couldn’t believe that I couldn’t get up a rabbit in the patch of pines that had been thinned two years before and had filled back up in a mix of briars, vines and 6-8 foot brush.

I was pushing through the brush, girded in snake chaps and drenched in bug spray when Dixie, following along with me, nose shot down towards the damp ground and her voice rang out, bell like and clear.
The other dogs, including Suzie on her first run with us , ran over and conferred deciding that the rabbit was, somewhere, in the thicket.
Lucy was the first to line him up and the race was on…. For over the next two hours, they ran that rabbit without any noticeable switch. Long loops almost to the paved road in the thick planted pines that were not ready for harvesting or thinning , followed by small loops within thick brush in the thinned areas.

I crouched in a line of small oaks, maybe 15 yards wide, the thick cover in the thinned pines in front of me with a overgrown logging road behind me and the planted pines behind it. The girls ran in smallish circles in front of me as the rabbit suddenly broke out and ran down the edge of oaks before cutting in towards me.
It was here that I watched Kate make her first mistake that I talked about at the first of the post.

I ran into her later after the rabbit crossed the clay logging road near the gate. She was limping, favoring her right front paw. I checked her pad for cuts, briars or a snake bite, but saw no sign of injury.
I worked my way out of the brush and to the logging road with Kate in tow. She acted like she wanted to run and had a air about her of “Sorry Boss, I know I’m supposed to be running”. Brag checked her and also saw nothing wrong though she seemed to “not feel well“, more than hurt and acted like she had done something wrong.

Brag and I saw the rabbit several times. In fact, if it had been hunting season, the race would have only lasted for fifteen minutes or so before one of us had taken a shot. Why, I might have even managed to hit it when it fooled Kate in the oak glade.

The loading area was cut with a + of hard packed clay roads. The rabbit repeatedly crossed the roads, running from one quadrant to another. The top two areas were thinned pines with the eight foot brush while the bottom two bordered the paved road and were in young, thickly planted, pines.

The girls would loose the trail on the clay before one or the other would reacquire the trail. We watched one rabbit, a stray or maybe the relieved first rabbit, duck out of the pines with the girls running hot on another's trail.

The rabbit tried another trick, a variation of what the cabin rabbit tries which is up the hard pack, then halfway down the hardpack followed by a long sideways jump into some brush.

This time it ran across the dry clay area where the loaded and parked trailers were and then sat in a patch of grass on the edge of some pines. Just long enough to get it’s scent down good. The rabbits ears seemed to turn like radar dishes to its back trail as we, the rabbit, Brag and I, listened to the “girls” as they boiled up the trail towards the loading area. The rabbit then turned and ran back towards the pack on it’s back trail before making a jump at a angle from its original trail.
The girls came into sight and promptly lost the trail on the clay. Lucy found where the rabbit had sat and the pack started milling around in the empty pines.

The girls seemed thoroughly confused, until Brag and I took pity on them and showed them the error of their ways. The rabbit gave Brag and me a thoroughly disgusted look over it’s shoulder as it jumped out of where it had squatted watching the dogs run past.

We quit when the girls gave up and came out one by one, Dixie first, Mystery last.

When I went to tend to the dog pen and give the girls their heartworm pills, I scratched Kate's ear. I checked it further. It was as thick as a prickly pear pad with dried blood. A further check showed that a spongy mass seemed to be forming on the front of her chest.
Snake bite!
Since it had happened almost nine hours before, the worst was past and nothing much could be done. She was going to be a very sick girl.

I left word for Brag on his voicemail before I left, he was off watching his bride ride in a horse show and I was late taking mine for an evening on the pontoon boat we keep at Florence on Lake Eufalua.
Brag took Kate to the vet after he got the message. The vet prescribed benadryl and some antibiotics in case of infection.

Be careful out there.