Schooling Brick

Sunday was a short day in the field due to the weather.

It had started to sprinkle as I left the house, but it was still dry and merely overcast as I approached Buckeystown. I met Chris at the Flint Hill General Store, and he said he had a new dog he wanted to show me.

Still in our trucks, we talked about where to go, and he suggested an area I call "the Unexplored Country," because it is at the very back of a good farm, with beautiful fields as verdant as any place you can imagine. When we first found these fields back in the cold early Spring, there had been a lot of center-of-the-field holes that suggested a lot of groundhogs had been at work. Chris thought if we visited this location now, when the weather was much warmer, we might be able to find fast action. Sounds like a plan.

I drove up the road and parked as close as we could. While I taped up a collar, I checked out Chris' new dog. He was a pretty large (13") red fell. There are not too many red fells in America -- only a handful -- and I guessed that this dog was Brick, a fell terrier out of Texas who (if memory serves me) was once in North Carolina (and maybe Florida too). Brick's a nice looking dog. Chris said he had gotten her from Linda Q., and he wanted to see how she would do in the field. Chris said he did not think Brick had seen too much underground work in Texas. No problem -- if he'll fit in a hole, he'll find work in this part of the country. In any case, it would be just Mountain and Brick in the field today, as Pearl was at home resting up after her spay.

We walked down a long hedge and over several fields on our way to the back of the farm. Mountain disappeared up a brushy slope, but came back after a bit -- she had clearly gone to ground, but it was not clear if she had found. We moved on, only to find the Unexplored Country standing tall in green barley. There would be no digging in the middle of these fields today. Too bad. In two or three weeks, when the barley is off, it might be different.

We knocked about in the woods on the edge of the field and got ourselves soaked in high brush and a light rain. There were plenty of holes along the edge, but nothing to be found to ground.

As we headed back to the truck, however, Mountain found in a shallow earth. She was in and out of one hole and then another, and it was pretty clear she had bottled a groundhog between them. It seemed as if she was only about 10 inches from it on either side of a connecting pipe, and the space between was only about 2 feet, so that's where the groundhog had to be. This should be easy ... and it was.

Chris and I cut away the top bit of the earth and and as fast as you can say it, Mountain was out of one hole and down into the cut and trying to pull the groundhog free. We broke Mountain off this groundhog and tied her up -- Mountain does not need the work, and Brick needed an introduction to quarry in a hole.

After clipping up Mountain, we let Brick off and he was down into the cut pretty fast, and hard on to the groundhog. We broke off Brick and I tailed out the groundhog, who seemed unscathed, and put him back in the sette through a regular den hole. Mr Groundhog dug away a bit, but he could not go very far into the collapsed pipe because the soil was so rocky.

After a short interval we let Brick go, and about 3/4 of the way underground he managed to stretch out his neck and grab the groundhog again. He tried to pull it free (good luck with that!), but could not, and so we broke him off the groundhog, and pulled out the groundhog for a final dispatch. While Brick had taken a gash to the muzzle for his troubles, the groundhog was in pretty fine shape -- a testimony to a hide as thick as the sole of a moccasin.

Back at the truck we doctored up Brick with a bit of proviodine and a little superglue. He should be fine in about 10 days.

Since the rain was coming down harder now, we decided to call it a day. There's always next weekend -- I have a new 170-acre farm to go to-- a reference from one of the other farms where I have knocked down quite a few groundhogs over the years. The lady who owns the farms wanted to know what I charge. Charge? Now there's an idea. No charge, Ma'am -- just glad to have a little more land to work. I'll be over on Sunday. Promise.

A not-very-large Spring groundhog with Brick attached. The digging bar is to the right.