We Win!*

*One Third of Dutch Salmon's Pack Hunt. (Details to follow when we recover from the 12 mile forced march.  Click image to see all the winners.)

Combing The Fields.

We went out with the All Girl Hunt again on Sunday... me with Willow and Ashley, Dutch with Phyllis, Cinnamon, and the eunuch JRT cross, "Jack".  We went to a field that had been fairly barren of late, and we'd left it alone for several weeks.  Additionally, we decided to go north instead of our usual route south.  We hadn't gone north in almost two months, and on this day we were going to go further north than we ever had.  This would prove to be a pretty good idea, as the GPS track above indicates.

I was walking Willow on a slip, because she had shown more than a passing interest in Jack.. as potential prey, not as a hunting buddy.  I thought it would be a good idea for her to get used to him.  We jumped the first jack pretty quickly (start and finish point of the day's walk is the lower left corner).  Willow showed an impressive burst of speed initially, but after a minute was well behind the group, which ended up in the foothill rock and scrub which effectively ended the course.

We walked a good distance further north when all hell broke loose.  A hare popped up, and the dogs gave chase.  I slipped Willow, and she took off in the opposite direction!  I thought, "Oh, she doesn't see it".  Au Contraire... she was off on a different rabbit!  We'd jumped two at once, and Willow had exclusive use of the second one.  While Dutch watched the main group, I followed Willow's progress, as she worked it pretty well, until...

... it went under the fence, which is how Willow learned the "fence lesson".  Go under it like the jack does.. and like the Pronhorn does:  the bottom strand is not barbed.  They usually only make this mistake once, and fortunaely, there were no matching lacerations under the blanket.  Margaret will  have an opportunity to try out the brand new, in-the-box Singer she got at last weekend's auction for $30!

Shortly after the fun with JR's 9A and 9B, I spotted another, who stayed out of everyone's sight, scooting low to the west.  The dogs didn't see it, thus "JR10nc" as in "no course".

Our day wasn't quite done as we made one more north-south sweep, and just as we were approaching the road that runs through the the middle of the fields, we found one more to chase.  By this time, I felt comfortable enough with Willow's ability to find her way back that I was letting her free course.  She was still showing some interest in Jack, but it was more curiosity now, than something like lunch.  This course was short, as the rabbit made straight for the brush.  After four good chases, one which ended up with the rare instance of the rabbit jumping into a hole, we decided to head back for the vehicles.

I called this post "Combing the Fields" because I thought the track was going to look like the teeth of a comb, (which it does.. a very small comb), and I thought we were going to to go up and down a few more times than we actually did.  Making only 4 sweeps, the track looks like something completely different, doesn't it?  Can you see the rabbit?  And not just any rabbit...  Maybe I should have named the post: "Frank"

Maybe the Best Course I Ever Never Saw!

Dutch couldn't make it out with us yesterday, but that was OK.  Our guys have been running well lately, and with a fair amount of success.  It was time to see if they could duplicate that success without the help from Dutch's dogs.. particularly Angie and Phyllis.  It was time to do a Pack Hunt "pre test" on Sandia and Ashley.

So Mrs. Shotonsite and I rounded up the two, and threw in Willow for the exercise, and headed out to a field we've left alone for several weeks in the hopes it would produce some jackrabbits.

As is our usual habit when not meeting Dutch, we were running quite late; by a few hours.  It was almost Noon.  Fortunately, there was a decent breeze from the North, so it was not as warm- at least initially- as it was forecast to be.  

We headed south, following a draw that's been known to hide rabbits in the past, but not this time.  We had Sandia and Ashley offlead, free coursing.  Sandia is very, very good at finding the hares.  But they were running around like maniacs, which isn't their normal style.  You'd have thought they hadn't been in the field in weeks, when it was only two days.  

Somewhere around 3/4 mile, we began to lose our breeze, and it started to get warm.  I decided if one of them was on a slip, the other would slow down and stay close.  I grabbed Ashley, got her slipped up, and as soon as we started walking again, wouldn't you know it, Sandia jumped a jack!

Away they went,  heading south. The rabbit got on the road with Sandia within inches of it, and Ashley catching up quickly.  Willow was bringing up the rear and getting good exercise!  Soon, Sandia wrenched the rabbit to the left, over a berm, and down from the high ground we were standing on.

In a field known for giving hunters unobstructed views of entire courses, no matter how long they run, we were standing in absolutely the worst place we could be.  Once they dropped out of sight , we didn't see them again.  We walked toward the edge, looking out on the flat, but they weren't there.  We couldn't see them anywhere.

About the time we were approaching the edge, Willow came back.  I don't think she ran very far, and being a black dog with a fairly heavy coat, I didn't mind.  She seemed fine, and we continued to look for the other two dogs.  I was blowing the Fox 40 continuously.  This was very unlike them, especially Sandia, who hustles back very quickly at the end of each course.  We even looked behind us in case they returned via the great circle route.  Not there.

Finally, I spotted two specs approaching from the south.  They had run a very, very great distance.  When they had been out of sight for such a long time, I shut off my stopwatch.  It registered 2:51.  I'm thinking now I may have been premature.  They probably ran close to 3:30, and maybe even more.  When they finally got back to us they were really beat.  Both were in a froth, and more exhausted than I've seen them this season, and they are in very good shape, sometimes running as many as 5 hares in a day.

Then I took a good look at Sandia..

,,,and his beard showed me everything I needed to know.  Blood.  They'd run that sucker down.  Ashley had blood on her, too.  It looks like they tried to carry it back, but it was too far, and they were too bushed.  

We decided they were done for this day, and headed back to the van, our little experiment successfully completed

Wolfman.

I know, it's a movie opening soon.  This has nothing to do with that, but will attract traffic to the blog from Google searches for the movie.

This is actually about Sandia.  We went out hunting today, as we do a couple of times a week.  This was a particularly rewarding day, with 4 long courses, culminating in a take on the mile+ fourth chase.  And as always, I took lots of pictures.  Many of them were pretty good, but it was a detail I noticed on one that caught my attention.

That's Sandia.  Looking scary.  And he looks so skinny when he's standing still!  Looking at it, I was reminded of something else:

Yeah.  That's what I thought.

First Hare

It was quite the color palette of girl dogs that hit the far reaches of the local public land yesterday.  All girls, because Dutch's girls are in season.  I joked we should have let Margaret and Cherie bring them out and we could just wait for them at Campos'.

There was the blue girl Ashley, the red girl Cinnamon, the red and white girl Phyllis, and the new star (we hope) Willow; in the yellow blanket.  This was, according to those who should know best, the first jackrabbit  she chased.  Fortuitously, it popped up right in front of us as I walked her on a slip.  She took off after it with great enthusiasm!

Then reality hit, as she fell behind the other dogs, and brought up the rear as they circled, and caught the jack a little over a minute later.  See, she's been in shelters, and foster homes, and on lead at our house for well over 2 months.  She's not even close to being in the shape the other dogs are in.  What she needs is time.  She may be competitive by the end of he cold weather season, (and I'll have to watch her more closely than the other dogs when it starts to warm up), but more likely it will be next Fall and Winter that she'll begin to really shine.  She's built for speed, and eventually I'm sure she'll show it.   Meanwhile...

...she'll just have to get by on her (considerable) looks.

A Changed Perspective.

I did something different this weekend.  There was a hunt locally, and I left the dogs at home, opting instead to carry about ten pounds of photographic equipment around the desert instead.  The results were, modestly speaking, fantastic.

Usually when I shoot, either at a hunt, or just out free coursing with friends, I'm with the gallery, and all the shots look the same.  You get a jackrabbit butt, and you get hound butts, as they disappear  into the distance.  This time, I got some separation from the group, and either hung out with the judge, or got off by myself, sometimes getting shots from the side, like this attached slideshow of the Saturday Greyhound final, or way out in front as I did for this second run from Sunday's preliminary Greyhound run.

In the slideshow above, I think I captured the feel of one of the best courses I think I've ever witnessed.  All three hounds in the chase took at least one shot at one of the most badassed jackrabbits I've ever seen. He even slipped away from a near fatal tactical error, where he turned left to avoid one dog not realizing the other two were waiting about 6 feet further left.  He finally created enough space to scamper over the hill and get into the rougher 

vegetation, and made his escape.

It was pretty obvious he'd experienced the hot breath of other predators in his brief life as a prey animal, and used all of his tricks.  Hats off to you, Mr. Hare!

First Team Test.

Make no mistake, Sandia and Ashley have run together numerous times in the last two years, but always they were accompanied by other hounds. Dutch always brings at least three dogs, and before this year, we'd usually have one of our older girls, and we're often accompanied by other friends from the area.

This photo, however, captures the first jackrabbit run by Sandia (blue) and Ashley (pink) as a "team".  Yesterday morning, Margaret and I took the pair to the big ranch on the way to Las Cruces.  They turned it a couple of times, (the images was taken after the left turn, and just prior to the right turn).  Just before they disappeared over the yucca covered ridge in the distance, we saw Ashley pass Sandia...  briefly.  At that point, he downshifted, spooled up the turbo and repassed.  Then they were gone.

They didn't bring anything back to us, but I figure that's just a matter of time and training, a couple times a week.  Probably going out again tomorrow.

The Life.

Yeah, because the Express broke down before we even hit El Paso, we missed the big lure coursing trial we were going to shoot this weekend.  I had to do this instead.  Damn.  (Sandia in blue)

Back to Normal.

It took nearly a dozen trips to the open field this Fall to finally catch a hare, and as it was at this particular field last year, this was the first race of the day.  It probably never should have even happened, and is a testament to the dogged (no pun intended) determination, speed, and endurance of today's pack; Dutch Salmon's Archie (above), Phylis, and Angie, and our one and only Sandia.

The call was long... way long. 50 yards out at least.  But Sandia anticipated it, so I slipped him, which caused Dutch and his brother-in-law, Glen,  to slip their hounds.  We bitched about the distance they needed to catch up, which was compounded by the fact the hare was bee-lining right for the adjacent ranch, which meant they all had to slow enough, and duck their heads to dive under the barbed wire fence.  All navigated the obstacle easily, and were still hot on the hare's tail as they crested a small rise and disappeared from sight about a thousand yards out.

They remained out of sight several minutes, and finally we saw Sandia and the girls returning, followed, much to our surprise, by Archie, who was packing the dead hare back to us. It was hard to tell which of the hounds actually caught the hare, because none of them were showing any evidence of having put their mouths on it except for Archie, who carried it all the way back, so he was proclaimed the winner.  We think it's possible they actually went under two fences to bring this rabbit down, based on where we saw the dust clouds popping up while the hounds were out of sight.

We ran five jackrabbits today, in a bit less than 2 hours.  A couple more were almost caught, but with each hare run, the hounds get a little bit more tired, while the hare is always a fresh one.  Doesn't hardly seem fair, does it?  Counting our trip out on Friday, Sandia, and Dutch's Phylis ran 9 jacks in the span of three days.  This, of course, will only make them stronger.  Plans are to get out to a different field later this week.

Subcontracting.

Here's a scene from the first course of the first TCC hunt on Saturday. I didn't feel like toting around the camera and my heavy binoculars, so I subcontracted out the duties, and passed my camera off to our friend, Frank Vigneri, who captured the release perfectly. That's me and Sandia on the right, running with a longdog, whose name I didn't get, in pink, and Sandia's brother, Zuni, in yellow. The jack can be seen upper left, and despite the handicap of being on the wrong end of the line at the start, Sandia won this course.

Because the temperature climbed over 70 in the early afternoon, the hunt was called after the preliminary round, so Sandia ended up 4th overall, out of 15 entered. It was a pretty good day.

The Long Wait is Over!

Counting on my fingers I see it's been 6 months... 6! A half a year since Sandia's been able to chase a jackrabbit. He was ready.

We Go "Hunting"

"We are Fam-i-leeee"... That's Sandia and his sister, Maya in the image above. While she's longer than tall, and he's taller than long, the family resemblance is still unmistakable.

Maya's owners came down to Deming for the open house on Saturday, and became the first overnight guests in the cabin. They pronounced it very comfortable.

Yesterday morning we headed out to the well known big ranch with Dutch, and another acquaintance with some rookie Azawakhs. Recently, the jackrabbits at this location have been bountiful, to say the least. On this day, for whatever reason, they made themselves scarce. Maybe the increased coyote activity we noticed had something to do with it. We almost never see coyotes here, and on this morning, we saw 4 in the access road as we arrived, and later, two followed Sandia's aunt Camille back from her first run. The stopped when they noted the people in the equation, and returned to whatever nefarious deeds they were originally involved in.

On a typical recent day we would have run 6 or 7 jacks by 10:30, and been on our way back to Deming for brunch at the Campos. Yesterday, we were still struggling to find a 4th rabbit so everyone could have run twice at 1PM!

That's when we put Sandia and Maya off-slip to better scare up the hares. As the picture above shows, they worked very well together. Not straying too far, stopping periodically, then moving, right to left, left to right in front of the gallery. We'd been at this for nearly an hour and were walking in the direction of the vehicles when they took off at a run. Not an all out run, but purposeful, until they flushed a group of meadowlarks. Oh. Birds. And as soon as we relaxed again, Sandia was right on the butt of a jackrabbit! So they did see something.

They were quite a ways away when this race started, but Dutch released Phyllis, and the Azawakh was slipped and everyone was away. The pack followed the hare right towards the vehicles, which smart ones sometimes try to use as a "pick", but this fooled no one, as the 4 dogs stayed right on it.

They were out of sight briefly, then we could see them still in a group, way beyond the vehicles... a quarter mile for more. My binoculars were in my pack, so I was doing my best to see the course with the naked eye. I saw the dust cloud, then saw no more.

We waited for further developments, when someone said, "they're coming back." We started walking towards the trucks, as a couple of the hounds waited there. Then I heard, "one of them's carrying something". It was Sandia, and they'd caught the hare on a roughly two minute chase. Dutch, who had watched with binoculars, said Sandia would have won the course if he'd been judging it, but all 4 hounds would have had an assist in the kill, as the group was turning the hare every 50 yards or so. I've seen Sandia not bring the hare back when he wasn't the hound who picked it up, so I know he got this one. It will be in the crock pot by this evening.

So, here's the "money" shot I didn't get a couple weeks ago. He dropped it about 50 yards short of us.. I guess it felt pretty heavy after running it almost a mile, then carrying it back almost a half mile.

People are always discussing.... (arguing?) the difference between "coursing" and "hunting". My definition has always been pretty simple: If you go out with your hounds and don't bring back a jackrabbit... you were coursing. Yesterday, Sandia and his kin, and buddies went hunting!

Foreigner.

With the exception of Steve Garth's Cai six years ago, all the Galgos I've seen hunting in New Mexico have been closely related.  They include Sandia's parents, his awesome Aunt Camille, and more recently, his litter mates.

Yesterday, on well known southern New Mexico ranch land we got to meet Lola, 

a smooth coated Galgo Español... from Spain.  Lola now lives in Louisiana with several other sighthounds, all of which are colored and marked very similarly so that her owner's husband does not know she has more than one dog.  A very complicated ruse, but apparently it works.

Lola will eventually be getting a kennel-mate/stud dog, so the numbers of Galgos in the US will more likely than not, increase.  I know Sandia's breeder is more than a little bit interested.

And just to remind you why this interest isn't totally misplaced, here's a video  showing the Spanish Galgos doing what they do best.  (This is the same video I had embedded on a post a couple years ago.  Embedding has since been disabled "by request", so this is the only place on this blog you can now see it.)

Meanwhile, the Galgo that I know the very best, (in blue), had a pretty fun day yesterday...

Missing the Money Shot

I've gotten to where I don't bother taking the camera out to the desert when we go hunting.  It's heavy, gets covered in a fine, fine dust that seems like it can't be doing the camera any good in the long run.  And if I'm going to tote something weighty, I'd rather it be the binoculars so I can better watch the action when it goes over the horizon.

So it was yesterday, as I packed Sandia and Fanny in the car for a rare afternoon hunt with Dutch. A brisk East wind was blowing, keeping the temperature in the mid 50's, so we weren't worried about heat.  We were at a field we hadn't visited in several weeks, and is always good for a couple of chases, if not exactly bountiful.

We'd walked south about a mile and a half, and then cut west a bit, then back north an equal distance without even a sniff of a hare.  We decided to turn to the west for a while, and that's precisely when the hare jumped right in front of Sandia.  He got the jump on everybody, and had a good run up, which eventually turned the hare... hard, to the right, almost right into the mouth of Dutch' s Phyllis (winner of the Desert Hare Classic) who was closing fast.  I saw her head go down in the high cover, but she came up empty.  Sandia avoided the collision, and stayed right behind the jack through several more turns.

Eventually the hare made a straightaway break, with Sandia still on its tail.  In fact, that was one of the more impressive parts of this chase, that despite the extremely high cover in this particular field, Sandia never let the prey get more than a couple of feet ahead of him, always keeping him in site.  When they broke into an open patch I could see Sandia lunging, ever so close to the hares rear, but not quite making contact.  Those would have been some pretty impressive photos had I, you know, had my camera with me... 

But that's not the "money shot" referred to in the title.  Ninety seconds after the race began, Sandia, with some help from Phyllis finally snapped up the jack.  A very brief "discussion" ensued as to who "owned" the jackrabbit, and for a while Sandia carried it back in tandem with Dutch's soon-to-be impressive puppy "Cinnamon", but she finally let go and Sandia proudly brought "dinner" back to me.  That was the money shot, as these events are rare.

This was probably Sandia's finest overall course of his young life, the first where he really looked like some of the best Galgos I've seen coursing in the southwest.  The best moves of the jackrabbit didn't shake him. He kept it in sight despite difficult conditions, and he refused to give up until the job was done.

But his day wasn't over.  After a fifteen minute rest, and some goats milk and water, he was back out front as we started our final sweep back towards the vehicles, and boom!  Fanny jumped this one, and for a nearly nine year old staghound, did herself proud in the run up until Sandia and Phyllis took over.  This rabbit had a different plan than it's "brother", and ran in a- fast - straight line to the southeast.  Sandia was, again, right on it as the rabbit's sinister tactic became apparent.  It was trying to get to a heavy concentration of creosote bush.. nasty stuff you don't want your dogs running into, and pretty much guaranteeing the jackrabbits survival to run another day.

The dogs straggled back looking like survivors of a WWII beach assault.  Dutch's Ashley had a big hole in her foreleg, while Sandia had a long, ugly tear on his rear foot and, discovered later, a couple more holes in his armpit and chest.  Not deep, just tears, but ugly.  By the time we got home, he'd stiffened up significantly.  This morning, he's moving around much better, but we may take him to the vet, because he won't let us touch him.

The drawback to the vet idea is that they'll probably want to suture the wounds, which means he'd most definitely miss a big Galgo outing planned for next week.  Galgos are coming down from the north of the state, including his mother and siblings,  and others are coming from out East somewhere.  So for now, I've got him on antibiotics and letting him keep the wounds clean on his own.

Meanwhile, we've purchased a bigass crockpot, and there'll be jackrabbit in the dog food tomorrow!

So that was yesterday.  One jackrabbit got caught.  One got even.  Rubber match anyone? 

Recipe for Disaster.

And I thought this only happened in lure coursing.  Not the part about the two jacks, though.

The scene:  Dutch Salmon's Desert Hare Classic, somewhere in the southwest US.  Margaret was slipping Sandia, in pink, between Luna, a lurcher/Tazi cross (and the winner of last year's event), and a saluki in blue.  

On a day that started out looking like hares were going to be at a premium, no one expected two to fire out of the tall grass like so many sporting clays.. one to the south, one to the north.  The "Tally Ho!" was called, and it was time to choose your rabbit!

Initially, Sandia and Luna chose two different hares, which got them going in opposite directions,

...which got them into what could have been a very serious situation.  In fact, it turned out to look much worse than it actually was. (And give me points for being professional, and keeping the shutter button pushed when my dog was in the middle of flying ass over teacup in the middle of the desert!).

They found their feet so quickly, that all three dogs got back on the jack, and a good course ensued.  I know it was good, because Sandia won it!

That got him into the second round, where he ended up finishing the day in 4th place.  I'm not unhappy with that, considering he was running against 18 of the best hounds in the southwest.  I am a bit unhappy that he finished behind his sister, Maya.  Again.  But as a friend reminded me, as a boy dog, he's not going to mature as fast, and if he's real good this year, he'll be awesome next year... and Maya will be in season!   ;o)  So that's our rallying cry:  "Wait till Next Year!"

More details on the Pack Hunt and Desert Hare Classic will be found in a future issue of Performance Sighthound Journal.  (We hope.)

Pack Practice

A shot from this morning.  Bad weather was forecast for overnight, but when I put Sandia and Fanny in the car and headed north, there wasn't a cloud in the sky. 

This is our "Pack" for next week's Pack Hunt.  Haven't decided yet whether we'll include Buffy just for fun. (Although she's pretty good at finding rabbits, so there's that to consider.)  Fanny, going on 9 years old, can still contribute in a big way.. it just takes her a week to recover.

We got up 4 rabbits in about an hour.  It was a good workout, which ended as the winds picked up, the rain started, and the temperatures dropped.

Other packs beware!

Weekly Bird of Prey.

Out on the ranchlands for our Sunday running of the hounds with Dutch, we popped this fellow up out of the tall grass. We see a lot of Burrowing Owls when we're hunting, but this is the second time in a couple of weeks we've seen this larger, Long Eared Owl.

We have our new friend, Zac, to thank for the identification. He'd seen them in a nearby field the previous day, and did the research to confirm the i.d. I admit, I did a lot of Googling last night, and initially was beginning to question that it really was a Long Eared Owl, because the habitat described on the various websites just didn't square with where we saw this bird. In the end, I decided it couldn't be anything else, and the "X" of white feathers on the face, just barely visible on the image below, did the trick.

We should have apologized for disturbing its sleep, as this bird is a nocturnal hunter. Sorry.

UPDATE 2/3/09: Heard from Steve Bodio, a man with much knOWLedge on the subject. He says, with about as much certainty as possible, that the above pictured bird is a SHORT Eared Owl. So there you have it. Good thing I hadn't checked anything off on my Life List yet.

You People Are Great!

When asked to step up, you respond with vigor.

While we're not exactly swamped with DUTCH T-Shirt orders, we've gotten more, in a short time, than I would have expected. Some people have even donated the $28 and decided to fore go the shirt so the whole amount goes to Dutch, which is cool. Other people are sending cash, with no strings (or T-Shirt orders) attached.

Thanks to bloggers Steve Bodio and Todd Birchfield our original post went nearly viral. On the first day we broke all visit records, logging 247 visitors!
We received donations from Great Britain, as someone had cross posted Steve's post- which linked our post- to the British website, The Hunting Life. We're still getting several visitors a day from that site.. and a lot of them are off to the bookstore, as many of the comments were about Dutch's landmark book, Gazehounds & Coursing. I think he may be moving a few copies this month.

I've heard from the quilt raffle organizers, and they've raised over.. well, a lot of money, and that was before you all read about it here, so a lot of money may turn into a shitlo boatload of money.

And if you follow the live traffic feed over there on the sidebar, you'll see that a goodly number of blog visitors have left via Dutch's bookstore . Dutch has confirmed one book sale... a very expensive book, in fact.. as a direct result of our post.

So.. why not keep up with the good news:

Buddy came home from the hospital on Saturday, and in Dutch's own words, "is on the mend". The snowball effect of which is that Dutch was able to bring out his hounds yesterday.. hounds who hadn't run in nearly a month.. to put the fear of god your deity of choice into a few jackrabbits. We took this opportunity to give Dutch his own shirt. He likes it, and thinks everybody should get one! ;o)

Other than the fact we had to walk 2 hours before jumping the first one, a good time was had by all. We'll be doing it again tomorrow.

17 Miles of Bad Road.

This past weekend, Sandia took part in the TCC* Derby in an area near Socorro, New Mexico. The event consisted of breed hunts on Saturday, with the winners and other placers moving on to run for the Conejo Cup on Sunday.

To get to the hunt area, it was required to navigate the above pictured county "road"; dust, washboard ripples, and soft powder ruled the day. We had to do this twice a day.

By virtue of winning the "Sprint Stake" on Saturday, defeating several of his litter mates, and his mother, along with a shag-coat longdog and a whippet, Sandia got to join the Cup hunters on Sunday.

When the dust cleared, and the scores were tabulated, Sandia wound up in 3rd Place... along with three other hounds.

He's pictured here with Margaret, and judge, Paul Sagar from Great Britain. I thought he might end up 2nd or 3rd... I just didn't expect all the company.
And we'd like to congratulate the winner, Frank Cassano's nice Saluki, Haba.

It was a beautiful weekend of spectacular coursing, with lots of sunshine, cool temps, (mostly) good sportsmanship,
and most importantly of all....

...nobody blew up!

*The Coursing Conservancy. Sorry, no link- website not available to the public.

Portraits: Dogs at Play.

Man, I've missed this place. It might be snowing and blowing elsewhere in New Mexico, but down here in Deming, it's been mostly sunny and in the mid-60s the last couple of days.

That's weather to take the dogs out in, and out we went. On Tuesday, I took Randir and Buffy to the other side of the Floridas. We jumped one jack that Buffy chased for a while, till it went through a fence. Randir didn't see it, so I didn't get the annual picture of the old dog and the rabbit. There'll be more opportunities next month when we return. Today, Sandia and Fanny got to chase 3 hares with Dutch's and Beth Ann's dogs. One was neatly dispatched after a 2 minute course.

So.. without further adieu...

Randir. AKA "freak of nature". To paraphrase David Allan Coe*, if he looks 12 and a third, I'll kiss your ass.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Still the prettiest dog on the planet. Don't you even try to disagree with me.

Buffy's sister, Fanny. Getting in touch with her "inner Lion".

And Sandia. Now over a year and a half, and looking debonair. (And showing off the evidence that he now knows how to go through barbed wire, although the secret is to go under it.)

*Be advised, if you follow this link, it ain't work safe.