Future Headlines

Posts coming up by the end of the weekend...

This happened yesterday.

This happened today.

This will happen tomorrow...

Progress Reports. (2 in 1)

A few weeks ago I wrote about the emergence of the poppies, and also about the beginnings of Sandia's thyroid supplement treatments.  Here, in a single image, is evidence that not only are the poppies on an accelerated growth spurt, but also that the supplements are beginning to have, however slight, a noticeable effect on Sandia's appearance.

Sad Sack..

"Sandia" (TSH WatermelonMan @ Shotonsite)

Having fathered what may turn out to be one of the happiest accidental breedings we never plan on repeating, we decided it was time to have Sandia neutered.  That "happy" event took place a week ago Tuesday.  He's taking it well, all things considered.

In addition to the surgery, we also requested that blood for a full Thyroid panel be drawn and sent to Michigan State. (They're good for something!)

Since last Summer, he's seemed depressed, and had gained more than ten pounds.  From above he looked like a sausage.  All the ripped muscles he had during the coursing season a year ago were gone.  We tried cutting back on his meals, and took him out to the field to run jackrabbits.  That was sad, as he had none of the explosive speed coupled with deep bottom endurance from last year.  It hurt to see him laboring behind all the other dogs when he had always pushed himself to be in front to fight for the hare.

I was pretty sure he was hypothyroid, a fact born out by the lab results from MSU.  We can now begin treatment with a relatively inexpensive supplement.  It's too late for this coursing season, but I'm optimistic we'll have our awesome Galgo back to his old self in time for next year's batch of jackrabbits.

The Winners Winners Winners

L-R Mike McLaughlin, Dutch Salmon, Paul Domski, Tavo Cruz

2010 was the first year in the history of Dutch Salmon's Pack Hunt that 3 packs caught jackrabbits, and ended up tied at the top.  Our pack was included in that triumvirate.  Now, just 2 years later, it's happened again.

This means one of two things: Either the dogs are getting better.. or the hares are getting worse.

Dutch Salmon's "Phoxy", and the hare that got away

Willow Plays at Being an Otter

Trying out a new, simple, animated GIF creator..  Had this sequence of pics from this morning of Willow discovering snow for the first time.. (or the first time in a long time).

Introducing "H1LDA"

A Secret!

Beatles - Do You Want To Know A Secret
Jumping straight back into the blogosphere without so much as a by your leave, sir.. Beginning with the most recent news.. (and there is a lot!).  
Back in September, just before we went on the aforementioned train trip to New York, Ashley and Sandia had a not-so-secret assignation, which I was not quick enough to break up.  That resulted in the not-so-little bundle of joy you see here.
Born on November 17, she shares her birthday with my late mother.  I decided that called for naming her after my mother- Hilda. (This was also the name of Dutch's very first sighthound, so that made it even more apropos!)  Since she was born a singleton, some modification of the spelling was called for.  I stole the idea from a large, midwestern athletic conference logo.  I named her H1LDA.  Make sure you get it right.

Beyond The Sea

The parents.. Otis/Fada.  Image ©Camilla Colleen

Earthly arrival early June.  Hare-Brained Homestead arrival anticipated late-August or early September.  Watch this space

Persistence Hunting

The pronghorn. The fastest mammal in North America.. the second fastest animal in the world, capable of running 55mph for extended periods.

In another part of the state of New Mexico, hundreds of miles from where I'm sitting, human beings tried to run a pronghorn down, using only their lung capacity, their legs, and their brainpower.  What the hell are they up to?

"The pronghorn is the second-fastest animal on earth, while the men are merely elite marathon runners who are trying to verify a theory about human evolution. Some scientists believe that our ancestors evolved into endurance athletes in order to hunt quad­rupeds by running them to exhaustion. If the theory holds up, the antelope I'm watching will eventually tire and the men will catch it. Then they'll have to decide whether to kill it for food or let it go."

I'm not sure whether or not I can buy into that theory, but it's really tantalizing to picture it.  Read the whole article to find out how these world class marathoners fared against our New Mexico Pronghorn.

This, of course, is not the only animal that is run down by humans.  There are numerous, incredibly fast and agile football players in college and pro ranks, including the University of Michigan who hale from a poor, rural location in Florida called Pahokee.  They  hone their skills like this..



Cottontails and "muck rabbits" (whatever they are)are one thing. Our blacktail jackrabbits are another thing altogether. Nobody is going to catch one on foot. That's why we use another method that's nearly as old as persistance hunting-

Simple Mathmatics

I can do the simple cipherin'. For instance, if I know that we have a healthy sized swarm of honeybees that hang around the leaky faucet in the yard (1), and I walk into the living room and find Buffy has changed her name to Puffy (1), then I can posit that the silly girl has put her face where it doesn't belong, and is likely       not to ever go again.That equals "2".   (1 + 1 = 2. Get it?)

It’s A Game of Keepaway..

Generally, a hound packing a hare back will walk, or at the most, trot. Not Willow. With the rest of the dogs hot on her trail, she came rushing back to show me the prize. With enthusiasm.

Not A Couple.

Ever wonder what would happen if your dog jumped a jackrabbit when a large bird of prey was in proximity?   Would the bird, (in this case a handsome Prairie Falcon) join in the pursuit?  Would it steal the prey?  I wondered the same thing!
I’ll keep on wondering, too, because the falcon  flew off just a second after I snapped this image, and a good half hour before we finally jumped a hare.   Ah, what might have been.

Happy Face!

"Click Play for Soundtrack"

Willow, and a couple of Salukis, came back with the same messy faces, but without the hare. There's little doubt that they caught the jack, but it seems there was probably some disagreement about who owned it. In the end, no one.

Field Of Dreams.

This coursing season started back in October, with a few posts, like this one, about the lack of jackrabbits in all the usual places.  We had days where we'd walk and walk and only scare up one in a couple of hours, and it would usually suffer a quick fate, because it couldn't move any faster than the dogs in the unusually thick and high cover.

Things were looking grim.

Then, towards the end of October, I piled the crew in the Mitsubishi and headed out to explore an area that Margaret and I had found almost by accident last Spring while attempting to take shortcut from the highway by the Aerostat station about 20 miles southwest of Deming, to the Victorio Mountains some 25 miles west of Deming.  As it turned out, it was shorter, but took about 90 minutes longer than if we had just driven around on the normal highways and county roads.

The area is huge, and is about 99% Federal and State land, leased for grazing some pretty large herds of cattle.  The cover is much more reasonable than any of our usual fields this year, and the ground is as walkable as a walk in the park, meaning there's no "bunchgrass", or big holes, or boulders.  It's flat.

That's all well and good, but is meaningless if there are no jacks!  My first exploratory trip was to the area we'd first driven through in the spring.  Jackrabbit "sign" was plentiful, but I saw no jacks.  I did some more exploratory driving and discovered that there were at least a half dozen distinct separate areas where one could hunt, including  a mammoth, flat plain that seemed to stretch out forever in all directions.  It was time to bring in Dutch and his dogs to see if there were, indeed, rabbits in this ideal area.

The first couple of trips were fruitless, and I think Dutch was losing faith as he would prefer to go back to the old places, rather than make the long drive out to this field.  But I kept at it, trying out new, different sections, and finally started getting some races.  Got Dutch back, and for the last two months we've been getting in some really exciting races, with about a 25% catch rate.  In that time we've probably seen and/or run close to 40 jacks, and we're really only scratching the surface.  Dutch is now so confident in the fields that he has decided to run his famous Pack Hunt and Desert Hare Classic on them.

The new fields also came with an unsuspected bonus!  With such a large expanse of flat, open land, the opportunity for great coursing photos was like nothing we've experienced in any of the other fields we hunt in southern New Mexico!  The hounds actually have an opportunity to turn the hare many times, and often back in the direction of where they started.... where I wait with my camera.

The images below, are all from a single run on January 5, 2011.  The dogs weren't lacking for opportunities to catch this jack, first with Willow in the lead, and later with the black and white Saluke, Bisa, who had several opportunities, but as we saw with the  hare in the previous post, this field is starting to establish a reputation for strong jacks that will take anything your pack of hounds can dish out!  This was another 3 minute marathon, that ended when the hare made it to the safety of the creosote bush patch on the north side of the draw, and Willow with a very sore foot.

Perfectly Executed 180° Turnaround.

We had one of those runs the other day that tend to get more spectacular, the more time separates it from the actual event.

Dutch brought along "the incorrigible Bob Schulz" (Gazehounds & Coursing, pg 142), and Bob came with his truck box full of young, old, black, red, and silver staghounds. I brought the girls, Willow and Ashley. Dutch's gang included Phyllis, and Stretch (his new hotblood). We were at the big, open field that has produced some very photogenic runs already this season.

We had a couple of 30-second sprints that ended with a spectacular, diving grab by Willow that ended with her muzzle on the hare on the ground and her back legs straight up in the air in the first, and Dutch's Phyllis making the most of the second.

Now, Dutch has a bad back, which has curtailed a lot of his walking in the field over the last month or so. He generally walks with us as far from the trucks as he feels comfortable getting, then waits while the rest of us make big loops in the desert, looking for more jacks to chase. He then watches with his binoculars, and kind of acts like a de-facto "judge". It was during this "resting" period that the third jack jumped. Immediately in front of me, as it turned out, and it wasn't the most fortuitous of starts, as there were no less than two hounds right in front of him.. in his path of travel.

Somehow, the hare negotiated that obstacle, with a hard left turn that left the dogs with their jaws snapping at air.  And the race was on.

When you hear the term, "survival of the fittest"... this is the kind of critter they're usually talking about.  For nearly three minutes- more than a mile and a half- the hounds chased, and turned this jack until they ran out of our site into the draw to our south.  Even then we knew the dogs were still turning it, because we could see periodic puffs of dust arise from the horizon.  Finally the dust stopped, and we knew that either the jack had been caught, or it had made its escape into the heavy creosote bush field across the draw.  It was several more minutes before the very knackered pack of hounds made it back to the trucks. Bloodless.

Later, when we were reliving, and embellishing the tale of the third race over steak and enchiladas at The Campos' Cafe, Dutch remarked that there was one time when he saw Phyllis running right next to the hare, and was looking right at it, when it doubled back, and gained some serious separation from its pursuers.  He thought that was pretty spectacular.

When reviewing my images from the day, I was very happy to find the exact sequence that so impressed Dutch.  And so, without further ado-

We can only hope that this hare, having survived the best our hounds could throw at it, survives further attacks from coyotes, and golden eagles, and bobcats, and other predators, to procreate, and pass these amazing survival skills on so we can continue to have  exciting chases for years to come.  Here's looking at you, kid.

Fencing.

One of the most important abilities a hound should have when hunting jackrabbits on rangeland, aside from the obvious talent for running at high speed, turning at said speed, and catching the damn thing, is the ability to fence. No, I'm not talking about grabbing the rapier and challenging the hare to a duel. I mean the ability to clear the barbed wire without tearing up their back, and to do it at speed so as to not lose ground to the hare.

Willow demonstrates:


Make gif

She learned the hard way. On her first crossing last winter, she tried to go through the middle strands. The technique can be trained with the simple use of bait and a leash or long rope and, of course, a fence. One without barbs would be ideal, but not necessary. Two people make it easier, too, but again it's not necessary.

With the dog on one side of the fence, and you, with your bait (food, cookies, etc) on the other side, run the lead under the bottom strand of the fence and call the dog. Stop him if he tries to go come through any part of the fence except the bottom strand of wire. When he does it right, give him the treat and praise him. Do it a couple of times a day, without being excessive, then start doing it without the leash or rope. Soon you'll have a hound who can dive under the wire after the hare without even appearing to slow down. The best dogs at this are a wonder to observe.

Have fun, keep your dogs safe, and every day will feel like today was for us

Fanny. A Fine Staghound.

Fanny. Past co-winner of the Golden Hare TCC Hunt (now the Holiday Run), and one AK shy of a TCC title. Participant in epic 5 minute jackrabbit race that Dutch Salmon called one of the 5 best courses he's ever seen. Drama queen. Tone deaf "singer". Official "Dashboard Dog" of the Hare-Brained Express. Trophy winner at the Loomis races. We'll miss her.

Crockpot Bound...

Yes, that's Willow running ahead of Sandia! Momentarily, she will turn that hare, and Sandia will then be in the lead... until he turns the hare yet again, and Willow (oh yes!) will make her first take! Good girl!

This run lasted about 90 seconds, featured lots of turns, and two journeys under the barbed wire. They didn't quit on this jackrabbit, and I'm proud. They will also enjoy it mixed with their kibble tomorrow.

This Just Seems Wrong...

This image of the rare conformationus curmudgeonus captured live at the ASFA Greyhound Specialty Conformation Match.

Fanny.

We've been pretty lucky with our hounds, with Randir living to be as old as Methuselah before we lost him last year, and Buffy's cruciate, and all of Rally's attempts to drive us into poverty, but they weren't life-threatening.

Above is one of a series of X-Rays done by Dr Jim Koschmann at Crossroads Animal Hospital in El Paso. Yesterday we received the results from the bone biopsy done at the same time, and it is as we expected. Osteosarcoma. Bone cancer.

We have limited options, one of which is amputation, as the cancer hasn't metastasized, and her lungs appear clear. But amputation would include removing part of the pelvis along with the limb, and there isn't a lot of references for it being done. Dr. Koschmann has never done it, and even the revered Jim Radcliffe hasn't done it, and could only find one reference for it.

Fanny's going on 11 years old. She's been one of our most consistent jackrabbit chasers and catchers. She's being kept comfortable and pain free with Prednisone and Tramadol. We'll stay with that routine, until we have to do something else.

We Found 'Em..!!

The jackrabbits, that is...

...and it's a secret.