Hunting in the rain

When Matthew and Peter were here last month, they took four dogs for a walk first thing every morning. Matt may have skipped a time or two, but Pete went every day. On the day they left for home, he asked me if I was going to continue the tradition. We all laughed. It wasn't very likely. I read and drink tea in the mornings, walk dogs late in the afternoon. But I had promised myself that if we took on the responsibility of another dog I would put forth more effort. [My husband asked me to also promise him that I wouldn't complain about doggy inconveniences.] Yet, for a number of reasons, I'm proud to report that I have been walking the dogs most mornings and most afternoons as well. The weather has been great. Fall is a wonderful time to walk in the woods. My husband has been working until two in the morning at Marvin Windows. When he's doing that, I take over the job of keeping our outside wood furnace going. I'm outside at the wood pile each morning. The dogs are with me, of course. It's so easy to make two fellow creatures happy just by heading on down the driveway. On a more selfish note, two walks a day, plus a short one down the driveway at bedtime and those dogs are perfect angels when they're in the house with me in the evening--even antsy little Bear. Besides that, it seems it's good for me. My husband said he has noticed that my gait has improved. I have noticed that my knees and hips ache less on morning walks. And for the dogs, I think the walks are their daily jobs. We patrol our territory. I wonder what the deer hunters who hunt the state woods east of us would think if they knew how thoroughly we fan out and chase all the game away twice each day. Bear is a "oh what the heck" kind of hunter. If she sees something run, she chases it a little. But for Sadie, hunting is a serious affair. She usually flushes out two or three grouse on each of our walks. They're really hard to catch if your human companion won't carry a gun, but she seems to think that the effort should be made anyhow. Bear thought it was a new game at first. The bird goes whirring through the trees. Sadie dashes after it. Bear goes bounding after Sadie, jumps on her back and then Sadie pins her to the ground with much serious growling and snapping. Bear's no dummy. She leaves the birds to Sadie now. She sticks to pouncing on the mice in the tall grass. This week we had rain. One afternoon when I went out to check the boiler, I noticed that Bear and Sadie were both muddy, especially Bear who gets wet and then curls up in the sand under the deck. It was raining hard and I had half way decided to skip the afternoon walk. The only trouble was, I had a couple of movies picked out to watch on T.V. I wouldn't enjoy them much with two restless, dirty dogs tussling around. So we set out in the rain and it was on that dark and dripping afternoon that Sadie finally had some luck with her hunting. To be honest, we didn't make the kill. Some other creature, maybe the one whose hairy scat we'd been seeing on the trail all week, had killed a rabbit and eaten most of it. All that was left was a little paw, a strip of fur and a leg bone with a little meat still on it. Sadie found it, carried it and dropped behind to crunch up the bone. Bear put on a great show of being totally uninterested in Sadie and her puny little rabbit foot. But when Sadie dropped it and stepped off the trail for a little look around, Bear immediately grabbed it and took off through the brush. Sadie gave chase. There was much noise. By the time they came back to me, the rabbit foot was lost. There hadn't been much left of it anyhow. When we arrived home we were all soaking wet. After we were towelled off, Sadie and Bear were soft and clean. We shared a can of Campbell's Chunky. One scoop over Sadie's dog food, one scoop over Bear's and two scoops for me. They sacked out early and I watched my movies in peace.