It had been raining for some time and it was cold and unpleasant outside. By noon on the following day the cloud cover broke and the sun came shining through. It was a welcome sight and so my wife and I decided to take our two little Dachshunds for a hike. They are fun and affectionate dogs and are good around other people. However, they are part of the hound family and they instinctively like to hunt. The German word Dachshund literally means “Badger Hound.” The breed was bred to scent, chase, and flush out burrow-dwelling animals such as badger’s, and prairie dogs. Their paws are paddle-shaped for efficient digging. They are also very stubborn and often disobey even the slightest command. Sometimes they even disobey you when you instruct them to do something they want to do. These character traits make it difficult to keep them on a leash as they tend to go after any hint of a scent that comes their way. I like to let them run free so they can experience all aspects of nature. So on this day we took them to a lake located about five miles west of our home. It has an improved trail on a dike that meanders through a wet lands area which borders the lake. We parked the car, let the dogs out and they were immediately off and running. They must have covered a half mile of terrain back and forth across the trail in the first hundred yards. Their noses contain over two hundred thousand receptors and they probably detected every varmint that lived along the swamp. We were enjoying a beautiful afternoon with the sun slowly setting in the west and shining on the snow capped mountains. The tallest peak was nearly 12,000 feet and had a donut shaped cloud on it’s top. It was calm, windless, and the dogs were having a good time. Our black pup “Gracie” was a natural born predator. Before long she made a beeline down near the water. She began circling some brush and then dove in the middle. Suddenly a large Mallard duck exploded out of the brush and gave her a little escape lesson as it flew effortlessly in the sky. Her sister “Roxie” was larger and stronger but was still learning about the concept of hunting. My wife and I kept walking down the trail and periodically the dogs sensed we were gone and then they would come running full speed from behind to find us. I had been told that some raccoon’s had been seen on the trail. Raccoon’s were primarily found on the East coast but by the early 1930’s they began to infiltrate the Western United States. They were Northern raccoon’s and weighed between 12 and 17 lbs. I had heard some stories of how some big “Boar” raccoons could be mean and vicious. My dogs were about the same weight except for “Roxie” who was about 20 lbs. but, I knew that a raccoon could really give them trouble. After we had walked over a mile on the trail the dogs caught a hot scent and ran down a rocky embankment towards a pile of fallen logs near the lake. They went to what appeared to be an opening of a den-like structure. Roxie was in back of Gracie who was barking out of control. I yelled at the dogs to come back but they were stubbornly obsessed with the hunt. Then without warning Roxie pushed Gracie aside and disappeared into the den. I could hear a terrible hissing and growling going on with no sign of my dog. She just didn’t come out and I thought a big coon was biting her. A few seconds later I saw her tail and she was obviously pulling something out of the den. When she finally came out she had an animal in her mouth about the size of a Muskrat. Unexpectedly a scream came out of the den and the head of a wild field cat appeared to retrieve her offspring. The dogs immediately backed off and I got them leashed and back on the trail. Ordinarily the dogs may not have been a match for a mean old field cat but in this case Roxie’s basic instinct to hunt varmints in the ground was overwhelming. All the way back on the trail she was unruly and swollen with pride. She was ready to hunt anything since she had finally been tested in battle.
Copyright: Gandy Dancer
April 22, 2012
Grandpa, this is great! Those silly dogs.
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