Lucy and Penny jumped this morning in the thick water soaked bottom below the ponds dam here at Rabbit Run only a few minutes after I let them out of the pen.
Katie came running back to me with Sammie and Sissy trailing a long. Sallie Mae went with Lucy and Penny chasing the big buck deer that hangs out in the thickets. This time it was a little different, I had Brag's collars on the Aunties and I used them. Rather harshly, I might add.

They broke off and returned to me. We made a circuit along the fence line with the dogs not showing any enthusiasm until we returned to the bottom. This time Lucy, then Penny got rather insistent that they smelled Rabbit. Katie sat next to me for a couple of minutes, head cocked, listening to Penny and Lucy's cold trail bark before she decided they indeed had a rabbits trail and raced into the brush with them.

Lucy was the first to hit it hot, followed by Katie, then Penny. I heard Sammie and Sissy a few times to. It was hard running. The bottom is soaked with seep water and pools left from the hard rains last week. Two of the three overflows are still running in the the pond. I could hear the girls (and Sammie) splashing along, running hot and cold as they acquired the trail and then lost it in the sheets of water.

They played with the rabbit (or maybe the rabbit played with them) for a good forty five minutes before losing the trail for good.

Not a bad morning, but nothing to brag about either.
28 days till the Alabama rabbit season starts