Farm Walk

This evening we took Maggie the border collie and Hubert the old beagle for a walk on the Brown Place, one of our Union Hall farms. My husband had mowed a trail yesterday, so we had a good place to walk. Maggie ran long and hard. All the pictures I took of her are blurred, so you won't see her in these pictures. You'll catch a glimpse of Hubert, though.

The sand pear is loaded with pears.

A leaf hangs suspended in a spider web.

Hubert wades in one of the pools in Bull Run Creek.

The trees look like sculpture.

The pawpaw grove was green, but no fruit were on the trees this year.

The spicebush berries have turned red—won't be long until the leaves turn yellow.

A grapevine hangs from the top of this tree.

Hubert wades in another part of the creek.

The above picture is upstream from here Hubert waded.

Leaves were luminous in the early evening sun.

The old house, built over a hundred years ago by John Tom Brown, is falling apart. No one has lived in it for a half-century or so.

Most of the out-buildings are gone, but part of the chicken house remains.

We had a nice walk. The dogs should sleep well tonight.

~

Found Hound Update

For a few days, I'd taken around fliers, asked local folks, contacted fox hunts within a 75-mile radius, and posted on FB and elsewhere on the Internet about the hound who showed up here Sunday. Nona Nelson of the Roanoke Times posted about him on her "Happy Wag" blog. But no owner came forth.

But—from the master of hounds at the Sedgefield Hunt in North Carolina—I did learn that he's a Walker hound who likely competes in field trials (hence, the number on his sides). Well, I'd tried Googling field trials and didn't have any luck.


Jason from down the road came by to look at the hound. He has beagles but knows a lot of hound folk. He told me that field trials weren't held on this side of Rt. 29. And he told me the numbers are applied with a stencil and hair dye.


I emailed my animal communicator friend, Karen Wrigley, who said "he felt like a working dog who ran off the beaten track from everyone else. With my back to the front of your house I want to turn my head 1/2 way between my front and the left shoulder. I think he came from that direction."


Karen also said, "He may have come from out of town. . . . He wants to be with his other dog friends . . . but it seems sooo far away. I think they are looking for him because he feels them thinking of him."   


About the time I was replying to Karen's email, I got a phone call from my neighbor, Mitzi Cabeen of the Smith Mountain Hounds. She'd been the first person I called when the hound showed up Sunday. Turns out she encountered a numbered hound on the road over her way, and the hound wanted into her truck. She took the hound home with her. But that hound's number was F1. Could what I thought was a number 5 be the letter F? Good possibility!


Somehow, through a person who knew a person who knew a person, Mitzi tracked down a guy in Blairs (54 miles away) who'd sold some Walker hounds last fall—numbered and with tracking collars. The guy who'd bought them wanted them as deer dogs. The one at Mitzi's didn't have a collar either, but he had a dirty square on his neck that indicated he'd worn a tracking collar not too long ago. Did the hound at my place have such a mark?


I went out and checked. Yep. He did.


Long story short: Lance Fowler, whose father and uncle breed and train hounds 54 miles away, came out to look at the dogs. The F on the dogs' sides stood for Fowler. She showed him a picture of the hound I'd found. It had been one of theirs, too. 


Why these hounds were collarless and running loose, we don't know. Did the purchaser dump them after hunting season was over? It's a mystery.


Anyhow, Mitzi called and said they were coming over. Soon Mitzi's car appeared in my driveway. Behind it was a red truck hauling a dog that looked almost exactly like the one I'd found.

The one I had was called "Mayday." He knew his name and he appeared to know the boys.

Anyhow, "Mayday" was reunited with his buddy.

There they go.

If the guy who'd purchased them comes looking for them, we can direct him where to go.

Meanwhile, there's another hound somewhere out there who needs to be found. While the Smith Mountain Hounds were fox-hunting in Pittsylvania  County last weekend, one of Mitzi's pack didn't return when the others did. So, if you happen to find a red and white male foxhound. . . .

~ 

Found Hound

Update, Wednesday, March 14: The hound, whose name is Mayday, was picked up by the breeder's family along with a pack-mate who'd found a friend of mine. Stay tuned for a post about this.

Yesterday, we found a hound. Actually, the hound found us.
Today, we impounded the hound in our kennel.

The nice-looking hound is an un-neutered male. He might be  a Walker or a foxhound—some hound breed with long legs. He's sweet and personable, respectful of cats, good around a horse, doesn't seem interested in cows, and he has numbers on his sides. One side looks like it might be a 518 or a 513.

The other side looks like it might be a 612, but I'm not sure. He might have been numbered because he was in some sort of competition.

Last evening, he really wanted in our kennel, but Maggie—who micro-manages the kennel—wasn't keen on that idea. He'd tried to get into a neighbor's kennel that morning. This morning he was outside the garage door. He followed me around and I gave him a modest breakfast. Oddly, he doesn't eat dry food, only canned food.

Today, my husband got him into the kennel without incident. He went to sleep in the grass. Below, Maggie tries to show him the finer points of digging a rat-hole, but he isn't interested.

Harley the Catahoula shows him around . . . 

. . . and watches while he naps.

He dozes off while Hubert the elderly beagle watches.

Hubert decides a nap sounds like a good idea.

If this is your hound, or you know who he belongs to, let me know by clicking here.

I think this hound really wants to go home. When he walked with me to the paperbox this morning, he looked intently at every truck that went by.

~

Snowy Emma

Since our senior dog Emma now lives in the garage instead of the kennel, I have to take her out and walk her several times a day and before we turn in for the night.

Emma lives in the garage because has arthritis and a bit of dysplasia in one hip. A few months ago, she had trouble standing up without assistance and even walking. (Plus, she and Maggie had some control issues over kennel management.) The vet put her on medication, which meant I had to give it to her. To make life easier for both Emma and me, I moved her into the large crate in the garage.

 Emma has responded well to her meds and has gotten surprising perky. She likes to play in the snow:

~

Is It Spring Yet?

Yep. Spring "officially" started today. How do I know?

Is it when the bridal wreath bush and the daffodils bloom?


Nope. Is it when the muscari blooms?


Nada. Is it when tulips pierce through the dead leaves that I never raked out of the flowerbed?


Negatory. But you've got to admit those are durned determined tulips. Take another look:


Is that cool, or what? Cool, yes. But the herald of spring? No. Does spring begin when the tulips bloom?


That's not it either. Maybe when the first blooms appear on the lunaria?


Wrong! Spring officially begins around here when Emma goes from a shaggy, debris-laden, multi-matted pooch . . .

. . . to this:

Now it's spring!
~

What a Difference

. . . a day makes.

On Monday—Groundhog Day, John and I explored the back boundaries of our Polecat Creek farm. The weather was unseasonably warm—60! We hiked to parts of the farm that I'd not seen before.

One place I'd never seen was the old Davis cemetery, just across the barbed wire fence that marks our boundary.  A gnarled tree guards the graveyard.

Here's the graveyard. (Yes, that's Maggie investigating.) Field stones mark the half-dozen or so graves. Sometime later, names were added to cement blocks in front of some stones.

But something odd happened on the way up to the cemetery. We had to climb some steep hills with ravines between. Maggie and Hubert ran ahead—as they usually do—and disappeared into a deep ravine. Suddenly both dogs yipped/shrieked/made dog equivalent of a scream and came running toward us at top speed. For a moment, Maggie glared back at the ravine. What could have scared Maggie? She's pretty fearless. (We didn't go down for a closer look.)

After we visited the cemetery, we went to our back boundary where we have some big timber.



I was really tired from the climb and had to sit on a log to rest. Maggie sat with me. (Hubert rolled and rolled in something foul.)


On the way back down, Maggie and Hubert sniffed through the woods. Can you find both dogs in the picture below?


Near Polecat Creek, Maggie checked a groundhog hole. If the groundhog had come out to see his shadow, he was gone now. Maggie gave the hole a pretty deep sniff. Nothing. Then she checked the other entrance. Nothing again.


Yesterday morning was cold and snowy—hard to believe that the day before was so warm. I guess the groundhog's prediction is right. Winter is back.


This morning was bitterly cold—and the forecast is for even lower temperatures tonight. Winter is back with a vengeance.

~