But by this morning I knew I was in real trouble. Darn it. Fortunately we don’t have any plans all this week – we’re just hanging out in Cottonwood. We had thought we’d be going into Sedona to do some nice hiking with the dogs but that won’t be happening.
Mike took the girls on a three hour hike out into the desert where they could be off leash the entire time. They had a great time hunting around and chasing the occasional bunny. When they chase a bunny they pay no attention to where they are stepping (naturally) and they both ended up with their legs full of cactus barbs. But they didn’t seem to care at the time!
Then it was Slugger’s turn. You don’t make much progress when you walk Slugger. So while he and Mike didn’t go all that far, they had fun staring into holes, sniffing the fresh air, and punching bushes in hopes that a lizard would come zooming out.
We thought it might do me some good to take a nice easy short walk. So about 5:00pm I took Boogie out as he’d been stuck inside with me all day. We walked the same route you’d take to get to the weekend's earthdog site. As soon as we got to that area, he immediately stopped in his tracks. Hey! Where was everyone? You could just see his little mind spinning around trying to make sense of this. I then tried to take him to where the tunnels and dens had been but he wanted nothing to do with it. He totally knew there was nothing here anymore.
So I decided to walk on the wheelchair route trail as I knew that would be flat and not too long. We were about nine tenths of the way around when Boogie shot off to some logs that were around the base of a tree. It was quite obvious after a minute or so that I needed to take his leash off as he was getting all tangled up and this was not easy on my legs.
It was obvious that now that he has an earthdog title he thinks he is quite the hunter! And a wise hunter as well.
Notice how he is very cautious and checks out the hole to make sure there isn't anything dangerous in there.
Thinking everything might be safe he slowly enters the "tunnel."
Now he thinks he'd better really move in to go for the quarry.
I let him bark for awhile and then decided this would be a great time to work on our recall as this is what he has to do in the next level of earthdog. Well what a waste of breathe that was. I called for a good two minutes (in competition you have 90 seconds to get the dog to come to you) but he never once even acknowledged that I was in the same county. So I gave up on calling him.
Finally he came out figuring that there must be another way in to where this critter lives. I did see some fur so I'm thinking a rabbit must have been here recently but there was no sign of hin now.
After a quick search around the area, Boogie found another hole. This time he wasn't nearly as cautious and just dove right in. As you can see, none of the big dogs would have been able to get more than their head in.
He was getting a bit frustrated and after barking in each hole for a couple minutes he'd go on to the next one.
But this time he scared me as it looked like he was going to all head first into a bottomless hole. Somehow he managed to get back out.
When barking didn't seem to be working, he decided to give digging a try. Talk about dusty!
Even though this wasn't the nice stroll I had planned on, I'm really glad we came on this outing as I ended up getting a great shot of Boogie. In fact, I liked this shot so much that I immediately sent it to my breeder. Unbeknownst to me (but of course totally fine), she immediately sent it on as well. I wasn't aware of this but it turns out Boogie's dad was just used as the stud dog for an upcoming litter. A lady saw this picture of Boogie and said she wants a puppy from the upcoming litter that looks just like Boogie. Wow! I guess this picture will have to go in Boogie's modeling portfolio!
Just seconds after I shot that picture, Boogie went back down into a hole. I really wanted to get home but all my calling in the world wasn't doing a bit of good. It's a really good thing these border terriers have tails...I was able to pull him out and get him back on leash. I can't say he was happy to leave at all.
Well, what an unexpected adventure.
Debbie
4/7/08
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