Digging on the Dogs

Garvey with his prize, and Pearl looking for hers.

Met up with Chris and Safiya to see if we could get their young dogs on some game.

Chris has a very nice, small, dark-chocolate Patterdale by the name of Bean he got from Jeff Rowe down in Tennessee. I have to tell you I was pretty knocked out by the size of this one -- perfect as far as I am concerned, at about 11 inches, and with a nice slim chest. A very pretty dog

Of course, not to be outdone, the next dog out of the box was Garvey, Safiya's jet-black Patterdale. He was a little bit bigger -- maybe 11.5 inches -- but he is about as small and nice-looking a male as I have seen. He came out of California and was gleaming gorgeous. These are some very young dogs, but Yes, I think they have some potential!

We did not get too far out of the truck before the dogs pinged, and we were at the first root-riddled hole of the day. This was a very shallow situation (maybe 10 inches!), but the pipe was very tight and twisty due to roots. No matter.

Garvey and Bean both did a small bit of work here, spending some time underground. Bean's penny has clearly dropped, though she is still very green. Garvey was a little more tentative going to ground, but he got under, and by the end of this dig he too understood that there were live things (and fun) to be found in holes.

His big find on this dig was a very young groundhog -- a juvenile with eyes open and teeth out. After Garvey pulled it, I dispatched it quickly, and gave it back to Garvey who then proceeded to walk around with it in his mouth, as proud as a peacock. Yes, indeed, I think Garvey is warming up!

We crossed down one hedge, and up through a small patch of woods, and down another hedge before the dogs pinged again. Mountain was on this sette for a short time, but then he went up the hill to see about something, leaving the younger dogs to noodle in and out of the hole. Garvey and Bean were clearly getting the hang of it, and before long they managed to bolt an adult groundhog! They were clearly as surprised as anyone, and the groundhog got away clean, but that's never a problem.

Mountain began to bay a bit, and I rounded up about 40 feet to see what she was on, and found her right underneath the root ball of a small tree.

She was clearly right on it, and though it looked like the roots of this ash tree were going to be a problem, that did not turn out to be the case. This was another twisty sette, but very shallow, and we accounted for another adult groundhog, and two more young, in short order. "That's seven," I joked. "At the hillbilly bars we never lie, we just dress up the story a bit."

We knocked around some more, visited an old fox sette I have bolted one out of before. I pointed out to Chris and Safiya the clear presence of fox -- a patch of fur on a rock. Then as we looked around we found more evidence -- turkey feathers and turkey bones. The good news (this being pup season) is that Mr. and Mrs. Fox were not home today. Fox will change den locations two or three times as the pups get older, and with warmer weather this den was probably cleared out of in order to help lose an exploding flea population. All good.

Of course, by the time we began paying attention to the dogs again, Mountain had disappeared, and we could not find her. We hunted high and low, but she had clearly gone to ground on something. After about 40 minutes, she came up from the forest, and started her "come her Timmy routine," so Chris and I followed her back to a nice sette we had somehow missed, though we had walked within 20 feet of it. Mountain was not acting like the groundhog was still home, making me think she had bolted it. We decided to move on, but we were only one and half fields away (and going back to the truck) when Mountain came up missing. Again. Damn! Of course she was to ground again, and not very far away, but we never did find her until she came trotting down from the woods about 50 minutes later. We decided to call it a day, I leashed up Mountain (she hates that) and we made our way back to the trucks.

All's well that ends well. The dogs were in fine shape, a few groundhog had been accounted for, and Garvey proved he's not afraid of the dark and likes the game well enough. With a little more field time, Bean and Garvey should be quite a pair. I have no doubt about it.
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