Relative Something

Sunday was a refreshing day of warmth and sunshine, which melted enough snow to bring us almost back to where things were before last week’s storm. As I expected, much of my day yesterday involved shoveling channels in the muddy ground to facilitate drainage of the melt water. Luckily, we got help from Elysa and her friend, Anne, who stopped by for a dose of country sun and to commune with all our animals.

Anne captured this beautiful picture of Legacy and Cayenne giving Elysa some love for her efforts.

In the morning, while Cyndie and I were working in the paddock, we spotted a local coyote hunter’s truck that had stopped on our road. Then I heard the baying sound of his hunting dogs and quickly became concerned about where Delilah was. We discovered her a little ways out in one of our fields, oblivious to the world as she buried her nose in the ground in pursuit of some enticing scent. We called her back to our vicinity.

A short while after that, the sound of the hunting dogs erupted again, this time closer, from the woods beyond our house. Delilah took off after the sound, despite my calls for her to stay. Uneasy about what the hunting dogs might do to the sudden appearance of our dog, I dropped my shovel and hustled after her. Before I got very far, I heard the hunter’s truck coming up behind me in our driveway.

He has been up to our house a couple other times, to ask permission to track coyotes across our property, so I was familiar with him. He assured me that Delilah was not at any risk from his dogs. Just then, she came sprinting back, now interested in this stranger standing with me. We visited briefly and then he checked his electronic tracker and found his pack of hounds had moved on, so he headed off down the road after them.

You’d think by this point we might have considered putting Delilah on a leash, but we went on about our activity as if that whole hunting dog concern was over. That’s not the way tracking necessarily works. After enough time passed to lull me into forgetting about it, I happened to glance up and spot an animal running along our southern property border. Initially, I wondered if it might be a coyote on the run from the pursuit, but it became clear it was one of the hunting dogs. By the time I located Delilah, it was obvious that she had seen it, too, and was already on the opposite side of that same field.

Despite both Cyndie’s and my protests, Delilah excitedly ran down to check on the new dogs visiting her turf. True to the hunter’s word, there were no threatening gestures from his pack, as the number of arriving dogs increased. What did end up happening was plenty of barking and eventually, confusion. With Delilah anxiously, but cautiously, trying to engage all these strange dogs, the pack seemed to lose track of their primary mission, and decided to focus all their attention on her. Delilah decided to retreat back toward us.

Soon there were hounds around and in the paddocks and a fair amount of chaos as Cyndie and I hollered, waffling between trying to collar our dog or the hunting dog that was now in proximity of our horses. In a flash the hunter’s truck was rushing up our driveway, and he apologized three different times as he hoisted each of his dogs up into their compartments on the back of his truck.

Happily, there were no problems that occurred from the close encounter between our dog and the hunting dogs. In fact, it turned out to be a great opportunity to increase awareness of Delilah to our surrounding community. The hunter happens to be a cousin of our neighbor whose property abuts ours on two sides. He approved of the orange vest we make her wear outside. He said he noticed her out in the field right away the first time he pulled over, and would make sure his cousin knows about her now, too.

I appreciate that, because we’ve been meaning to introduce her since we brought her home last July, and just never got around to making it happen.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.