Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Out From Under in the World of Working Terriers

If you dig on working terriers long enough, you will find the dogs eventually go to ground on stuff that is undiggable, or very nearly so.

Among the things I have encountered in the field, some of which I have worked around, and some of which were impossible and which required me to simply wait until the dog came out:


  1. Old metal roofing covered with dirt.

  2. Old asphalt shingles covered with dirt.

  3. Old tires covered with dirt.

  4. Solid (and big) shelves of rock.

  5. Old cow bones -- lots and lots of them!

  6. Downed trees blown over entire settes.

  7. Old trucks and cars (the dog in the ground underneath the chassis).

  8. Assorted farm rubble of every kind.

  9. Dirt mixed with old broken glass bottles and cans.

  10. Old fence posts.

  11. Coils of old barbed wire covered in dirt.

  12. A bee hive (digging to the dog only 12 feet away).

  13. Massive multiflora rose breaks -- solid stands 6 feet tall and better.
  14. An old asphalt road bed.

  15. The hard-packed floor of an old horse stable.

  16. The rock foundation of an old building.

  17. Bricks and field rocks covered by dirt.

  18. Old hog wire fencing covered in dirt.

  19. A stump dump.

  20. A collapsed barn.

  21. Sheet plastic tarps and old feed bags mixed with dirt.

  22. Masses of hay bail twine covered over in dirt.

  23. Concrete floors of barns and other outbuildings.

  24. Tractors in a tractor shed.

  25. A huge metal boiler.

  26. A porch.

  27. An old dam (the farm pond long since drained) full of rip-rap.

  28. Coal pitched down a ravine and grown over with Kudzu.

  29. Solid masses of roots so thick that a narrow saw blade could not get in.

  30. Stacked big round bales.

.

1 comment:

an American in Copenhagen said...

I am making a mental note of that list in case I am ever reincarnated as a groundhog in Virginia. ;)