Happy Birthday Gideon!

Gideon came to me at a little past two and a half years of age thanks to the kindness of Dawn Weiss at Briar Run Jack Russell Terriers in Missouri.  Gideon is a tough 11-inch body attached to a big head that is always sporting an enormous grin, and he lives for food, balls, and time in the field.  Gideon is Dawn's breeding, but behind him are quite a few Kingsway dogs from Jan DeWinter in Belgium, who seems to produce a steady stream of workers himself. As for Gideon, he is the only intact dog I have and he will remain so, which is all the editorializing I need to make about his value to me as a worker and companion.  So far as I can tell, Gideon has never met a dog or a human he could not convert to his side in five seconds.  Dale Carnegie could take lessons!
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Gideon

Little body, enormous head, huge heart, big smile.
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Gideon Works a Hole

Gideon comes into the bore hole I have punched into the sette.

Gideon moves past the hole into the far reaches of the sette.

Gideon latches on to the groundhog's rump to get it to turn and stop digging.

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A happy Gideon with dispatched groundhog.

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One of Gideon's Sunday Groundhogs

Gideon with one of yesterday's groundhogs.  


Gideon works two holes on video.  Without sound, for unknown reasons:  (hole 1, hole 2).

Technology is having its way with me these days; I have a new cell phone and I think my "tech brain" is full from trying to figure out how to work it.   I have never taken video with the point-and-shoot and not had sound before.  Oh well.  I ran out of batteries in the field too.  Wonder if that had something to do with it?
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Gideon Bolts His First Groundhog

Gideon bolted his first groundhog yesterday.

The sette was an enormous multi-eye labyrinth in a never-plowed field, and the groundhog went back to ground in another part of the sette, but by then I was done digging in the searing sun. It was 88 degrees in the shade acording to my cell phone, but I was not digging in the shade!

I packed it up, to try elewhere, and we hit the nearby forest. The dogs found some more holes, but after another hour of noodling around, I called it a day and headed back home to finish some writing. Deadlines!

Gideon has the most remarkable range of sounds that come out of him. He yodels, wails, barks, and makes a sound with his mouth that sounds like he's got serious indigestion. Very comical.

I have to say Gideon has already proven to be quite a wonderful dog. He loves kids, does great with the other dogs, readily goes to ground, and does not range very far when we are out in the field. Pretty perfect.

I can hardly wait until it gets a little cooler!
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Gideon Takes a Short Outing to a Farm

I took Mountain and Gideon to a small farm to see how Gideon would do off-lead, and if he'd be interested in exploring a few settes.

It was a drizzly day, but only projected to hit 88 degreess which counts for cool after the suffocating heat of the last two months.

Gideon was terrific off leash -- he stayed with me and was interested in what Mountain was up to, but not to the extent that he forgot I was his first charge. Perfect.

We busted a Great Blue Heron and a Great Egret in the creek bed; I always enjoy seeing these large birds take flight.

We hit a lot of holes, but Mountain never opened up except for one sette underneath a massive hollow tree (top picture) which cannot be dug and where the groundhog always escapes by climbing up inside the tree. Some places really are fortresses.

All in all a good, if blank, day. We were only out for a couple of hours. Next week, if it's cool, we'll get in some real hunting.


Gideon listens to Mountain inside trunk.


Gideon slides in to check a sette.


Another blank hole. The plastic pipe at left protects a newly planted tree from deer damage.


Gideon checks another sette hoping to find.


Where are the groundhogs?
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Gideon Bays It and Bolts It

Gideon faced his first squirrel in the short den liner this morning, and he did fine.

There has been no hesitation going down the pipe, and the dog seems to bay well for such a green dog, and considering it cant get with 20" of the quarry.

I released this squirrel (they are only held captive for one short session), and hopefully we will catch another for this afternoon. The trick with training sessions is to keep them short and fun, and build on them. Gideon wants more, more, more!

The bags of mulch on the top of the den liner are there to prevent the liner from moving. The back of the critter box has been rotated out for this first training session, so that Gideon can see the squirrel and associate it with the scent and the scurrying noise. A groundhog, for the record, is simply a 15-pound ground squirrel.



This little clip is the end of Gideon's first go-to-ground session. The squirrel bolts to freedom at the end (not sure if it can be seen). No animals were harmed in the making of this movie!
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For another version of the same story, but with Gordon the Cairn, see Harris' Hawk Blog.
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Gideon Comes Along

Gideon did better than I did this weekend.

While Gideon was running through the go-to-ground pipe with no more encouragement than a piece of kibble (I think he is going to be great in the field), I failed to catch a squirrel for his critter practice. It would have helped, of course, if I had baited the Havahart trap for a few days before hand, but I failed to do that. Live and learn.

What I did to, Saturday morning, was rip out my back doing yard work. It wasn't the junior lumberjack--with-a-chainsaw stuff that laid me out -- I did that first. It was the hedge clippers! Somehow I held them in such a way, for a long enough period of time, that I ripped a long muscle out on one side of my back. It had gotten worse by Sunday (I could barely stand), so I called the spouse in Chicago (she is at a convention) and asked her where she kept the stuff that makes pain in the back go away. Two of those pills helped a little, but I am still not 100%.

Gideon and I are working on two things: going up and downs stairs, and a basic sit. Gideon is not used to stairs, so I have been putting a light parachute cord on him for encouragament. As for sitting, the position seems entirely foreign to him -- he likes to stand, thank you very much. We are working on a basic sit, nonetheless, if for no other reason than a sit is the doorway to "lie down" and "roll over."

Gideon loves toys and he seems to already know his name. He has done very well with our basic morning and evening routine, and he is easy to bathe and seems to enjoy it.

Gideon is a bit fascinated by TV, and he seems to especially like dramatic action music and fight scenes. He does not like power tools -- or perhaps he thinks they are alive. The blower, the lawn hedger, and the chainsaw all generate a lot of baying on his part -- he has a voice and it's pretty deep! No worries about the chainsaw, by the way -- he was locked in the garage while that tool was in motion!
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A Canine Name Change

A happy little dog and his new man.

The new dog has undergone a name change: from Possum to Gideon. Of course the dog's registered name will stay the same: Briar Run Pimp Daddy (his sire's name was "Hustler").

Gideon, of course, is in reference to the Biblical General who defeated his crop-raiding enemies by making a mighty noise in the dark in Judges 6-8. Of course, Gideon won despite his much smaller force. It seems the sound made by Gideon's small band of of troops intimidated his enemies into giving up and running away! Of course isn't that exactly how a Jack Russell terrier successfully wages battle nine times out of ten?

Perfect!

Adding a bit to the story is that Gideon chose his small band of warriors because they were the ones who, when they were thirsty and came to a stream, lapped up water like dogs.

This is one of the very few mentions of dogs in the Bible, and the only positive one, I believe.

Gideon is also Hebrew for "the destroyer" and "a mighty warrior," which seems a more fitting name for a working terrier than an animal slow in speed and thought.

Plus, I write about possums often enough that I think it would be confusing to have a dog with that name, requiring me to put the dog's name in "quote marks" to keep it straight from the marsupial.

But a name in quote marks has a suspect-quality to it -- as if the dog's real name was something else. We can't have that!

And so a name change.

It does not hurt that I know two Gideons (first name for one, last name for the other), or that Gideon's army was instructed to go into battle yelling "A sword for the Lord and Gideon!"

I do not own a sword, but I think my field machete will do in a pinch. A sword for the Lord and Gideon indeed!


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