A Pound of Pennies

Rocks and roots at the second hole of the day. Not the large uplift rock to the right that has been partially obscured by the sette repair.

On Sunday Chris and I met up at the Buckeystown General Store, before heading off to some nearby farm land.

It was just two weeks ago that Sailor was bitten by a black widow spider bite. Other than two shaved spots on her front legs, where blood had been drawn and fluids administered, she seemed fit as a fiddle.

The neurotoxins that had left her paralyzed for over six hours, seem to have left no lasting damage.

Mountain, of course, is always "ready for Freddy".

As for Chris' new pup -- eight-month-old Moxie -- this was her second time in the field. As we headed out of the woods and over a freshly cut barley field, she seemed to relax around the two older dogs and began running around, clearly enamored with Mountain who she decided was the leader of the pack.

It was 9 am, but it was already hot. Lucky for us Sailor and Mountain found pretty quickly in a nice shady hedge. The hole was very tight, however -- so tight Sailor could not even get in. We opened up the hole a little, but it still took 20 minutes of digging before Sailor managed to turn the corner and disappear. Once inside, however, she seemed to find quickly and began a furious baying. She was clearly hard against it.

The ground here was rooty, but the soil was OK for the first two feet. After that it was a mass of cobble stone.

These large stones had been gleaned from the fields and pushed to the edge more than 200 years ago when this land was first cleared for agriculture. Since that time, the hedge had grown up among the stones, and leaf litter and tree roots had drifted in over the top.

Digging was hard, but the pipe was not deep. About three and a half feet down we broke into the tunnel. I started a second hole a few feet over, but had not gotten very far before the groundhog managed to bolt out of a small den hole we had left unblocked.

The groundhog ran about 40 feet across the forest with Chris in hot pursuit, shovel in hand. That groundhog flew up the trunk of a tree and was 40-feet up in a matter of seconds.

Chris was pissed, but I was amused. Good for the groundhog. If we won every game, it would not be sport. We could hunt this one another day. He was a smart one.

While we were variously frustrated and amused, Sailor was still underground -- she was having a difficult time squeezing through the impossibly tight pipe that the groundhog had bolted out from. With a little assistance from Chris, however, she managed to pop out. First thing out of the pipe, she followed the groundhog's scent trail over to the tree and looked up. There it was. If only she could fly!

Moxie, Chris' little black dog, followed Sailor and was clearly cranked up from the scent she was now smelling . I think Moxie missed the bolt itself, but now that she could smell the groundhog and watch Sailor, she knew the game was afoot. Moxie paced back and forth from bolt hole to tree, and made an odd high-pitched whining sound as she looked up the trunk in the general direction Mountain was looking. Moxie was learning.

"That little one is putting it all together Chris," I said. "The penny has not quite dropped, but it's hanging there in the slot. She's right on the edge." Chris mentioned he had been doing a little tunnel work with Moxie, and she was already going down the wooden den liner and taking the corner to retrieve her squeeker toy.

Excellent. That's the idea!

We repaired the sette and moved up the field to the forest edge. The forest here sloped down to a creek bed, and on the other side of the creek was a high bank. I said I thought we would find up on that bank, and sure enough, we did.

No sooner had we crossed over than Mountain was doing his "Come here, Timmy" routine.

"Come here Timmy" is a reference to the old Lassie movies, when Lassie would run over to Timmy and bark. It always meant something complicated like, "Come here Timmy, Mr. McPherson has fallen down the well and has a fractured leg."

And Timmy always seemed to understand the whole story.

Now I have Mountain, and she does a "Come here, Timmy," especially if she finds something in a very tight hole she cannot quite enter herself. Now she stood at the edge of a rock-rimmed hole, looked over at me as I came down the creek bank, wagged her tail, and then looked back at the hole grinning.

"Come here, Timmy! Mr. Groundhog is down the hole, and I want to break its leg." Easy dog, I'm coming.

As is always the case if Mountain cannot enter on her own, this sette was very tight. It was located in the middle of four or five trees that seemed to spring from a jumble of boulders. I paused a bit, but decided it was probably doable as it was likely to be a shallow sette. Thankfully, it was.

After a bit of a struggle to get in, Sailor, the smaller dog, opened up to a nice solid bay. She was hard up against it, and the critter was not deep.

The bad news was that there was rock everywhere.

We located Sailor and began to pry up the large stones as we came to them. A little dirt was moved with a shovel, but this dig was mostly about cutting through roots, moving a few handfuls of soil, and then prying up more rock.

I shattered a few stones with the bar -- one of them pefectly round and bigger than my head. It was cleaved into two perfect half-spheres. Amazing.

When we got down to the pipe, we found Sailor hard on the groundhog's front end, and trying to pull it out of the hole face-first.

Sailor is a little thing -- just 10 pounds -- and not very hard, but she was going at this one hammer and tongs.

Enough of that -- time to get the right tool for the right job.

With a bit of a struggle we got Sailor off the groundhog, and swapped her out for Mountain. Mountain is a bit bigger and quite a bit stronger and younger. She gripped on and quickly pulled out a small groundhog of about 8 or 9 pounds.

I dispatched this one pretty quickly, and then we tied up Sailor and Mountain in order to let Moxie rag the carcas a bit. A little work with dead quarry can teach a young dog about scent, and is a small reward for paying attention while the older dogs work

Moxie chased the dead groundhog a bit as we pulled it around on the ground, and then we let her chew on it while we repaired the sette. When we finally placed the groundhog high up in the fork of a tree, Moxie was tongue-out and happy.

For her end of the bargain, Sailor was too tuckered to pucker, and we decided to stake her out under some heavy shade so she could rest. She had worked two good holes solo and in some pretty fierce heat. Mountain would have to find and work the next one.

We headed out of the forest and into an area of tall grassand small trees, with Moxie hard on our heels.

We had not gone more than 50 feet before we hit a big sette. Mountain was off looking for just such a hole. We paused, waiting for Mountain to circle back.

Moxie, however, seemed a little interested in the hole. I slid of my pack and put down the tools. This might be interesting.

Moxie stuck her head into the hole and slunk dowm low to the dirt like she was stalking.

"Look at that Chris, the penny is beginning to drop."

And drop it did. Moxie stuck her head in to the hole, pulled it out, put her head back in a little deeper, and then went in all the way up to the tip of her tail.

She came out again, looked at us, and then slid back down the pipe. Chris and I silently high-fived each other. Excellent! She was out of sight!

If that was all there was, this would have been a great day. But now, rather miraculously, Moxie began a deep rhythmic baying. Hot damn -- she had found!

This sette was big soft-earth pipe,and Moxie had a lot of room to move around down there. The pipe itself seemed to go straight back -- a nice simple sette. This was excellent.

We let Moxie bay it up for a while ("Let's not move too quick here, give her some time to learn a little something. She's in a nice safe sette"). Chris was ecstatic, and so was I. Waiting for the penny to drop? Hell, this dog had just hit the trifecta on the nickel slots.

We barred for the hole and found it two feet down. This dirt was easy digging -- no root and no rock. As luck would have it, we came into the side of the hole. There we found Moxie baying up the groundhog, and the groundhog -- aggressive as hell -- charging her from the stop end of the pipe.

Perfect!

In her excitement, Moxie had bitten her own tongue, but her tail was going like a metronome. She was clearly having a ball, and her deep baying was as solid as a dance hall beat.

This was about as good a first experience as a young dog could ever have.

After a few more minutes of letting Moxie work her stuff, we slipped in the shovel and I snared out the groundhog and dispatched it. This was a small Spring groundhog, but it was just what the doctor had ordered for a young dog like Moxie.

As I said to Chris as we filled in this third hole of the day, "We started off with two working dogs, but we're leaving with three." Yahoo!

Moxie is going to be terrific. The task ahead is to simply go slow. There is no rush now -- we know this little dog has the right stuff in her. She is not even 9 months old yet -- the best game plan now is to reign in the horses a bit and let her grow a little judgement and discretion.

A young dog with a little success is like a young motorcycle rider with his first 60 miles of road under his belt -- an accident waiting to happen due to over confidence.


Moxie rags her first one -- worked solo, front door to back


There will be a lot more digs between now and the first of October. The goal for the next two or three months should be to make sure Moxie only has positive experiences. That means reserving her for larger simple holes without too many complicatations for her to negotiate.

If a young dog is over-matched and jibes, it's hard to get her back in the groove again.

With a young dog so quick to start, the faster way to success is going to be found in the slow lane. Avoiding mistakes now needs to be Job One.

Chris and I were both hot and tired, and we decided to call it a day. We headed back to the vehicles, losing Mountain along the way. After a bit of looking we found her about 75 feet from where we had last seen her. She was in the middle of a thicket of weeds and broken timber doing her very best "Come here, Timmy" routine. She had found again, but in the 92 degree heat, we were too pooped to party.

Give it up dog, there's always next weekend!



An escapee from J-Unit with his fine young dog and its very first 'hog. There will be many more.