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Stink
Dog
I went hunting
with Larry Morrison on Saturday.
Larry is a JRTCA hunt
judge, a terrific gentleman, and about as
knowledgeable a terrierman as I've met so far.
I met his daughter Gail on-line back when I was
looking for a small dog. Their very small bitch
had three pups, only one of which was female.
They decided to keep her for themselves -- a smart
move as she's turned out to be a REALLY nice
looking dog.
I met Larry at his
place at 8:30 and we were on the road in just a few
minutes. It was cool (about 45 degrees)
and still early when we got to the farm, so we
started looking for raccoons in den holes between a
small creek and as-yet uncut corn field. Nothing
home.
As we came out of the
woods we got to a tall electric
fence. The top two wires were cold, so I
thought maybe the fence had been turned off. My
mistake. As I got to the top the third wire down
shocked me pretty good, and I leaped off. As I
went over the top, however, my right foot got
tangled and twisted in the top two fence wires. I
ended up with my right ankle hog-tied and twisted up
in the fence behind me, my head down on the ground
with the pack still on my back, and nothing to grab
on to but the hot third wire behind me.
I tried to stand up using the posthole digger, but
only succeeded in moving my foot just enough to
connect my tangled foot with the hot third wire
-- ouch!
The good news is
that Larry got me disentangled without laughing too
hard. In the end I got away with nothing
but a little scrape and a bruise.
After Larry pried
me off the wire we started down the pasture. It
was then that I realized Trooper had disappeared in
the commotion. I didn't worry too much about
that -- he's really too big to get down a hole
(15 inches at the shoulder), he doesn't run off, he's
stock broke, and he doesn't care about other
dogs. It was odd he didn't come when I whistled
though ....
We went up the
pasture along a creek. Still no sign of
Trooper.
Trooper
the border terrier, Lilypons, Maryland
We were headed up to a
brushy patch of bramble about halfway up the sloped
pasture. Larry knew there was a good sette in
there, and Sailor ran ahead to the location.
A rock had slid into the groundhog hole, making it a
particularly narrow entrance. Sailor is only
12.75 inches at the chest and yet she could barely
slip past the stone. She got in, and whatever
was inside was very close to the entrance. I
heard an odd chirping sound I hadn't heard
before. Larry got to the hole just as the
critter moved away from the entrance. I told
Larry I thought it was either a fox or a 'coon -- it
sure didn't sound like a 'chuck. Maybe my dog
was making weird sounds, though.
Larry settled in
to wait for the bolt, and motioned me up the hill to
keep an eye on the uphill exit holes. This
looked like a four-eyed sette, and all three of the
other eyes were within my view from my perch on the
hill. Whatever bolted would have to run
out of the bramble patch and would have a long
run across open pasture -- a perfect place for
Trooper to do what he does best. Where the hell
was he?
After about five minutes, I saw something black
and white dash out of one hole and dive into
another followed by Sailor just two feet
behind. SKUNK!
I cursed and hollered
for Larry, just as the skunk, with Sailor close
behind, dived underground again. Then the skunk
sprayed and we could smell it. I started hacking at
the brambles with my very dull machete, and Larry got
out the locator and tried to get a fix on the dog's
whereabouts underground.
Unfortunately, the electric fences all around us were
throwing off the collar, and the reading was pretty
unclear.
The dirt was soft and I started cutting into the
bank to open up the tunnel. All I
could think of was that one of my dogs had just come
up missing, while the other might end up dead
if she passed out underground and I couldn't locate
her.
A few minutes
later --- no more than five -- Sailor staggered out
from a hole behind me, and Larry said,
"There she is." I scooped up Sailor
and swung her to get the blood pumping to her head
and to encourage her to vomit. She threw up
watery fluid almost instantly, and did so again
as I rushed her down the hill to a tiny creek
cutting through the bottom of the pasture.
There I coated her in mud to wash off the skunk stink
(the mud would dry and flake off) and to stimulate
her into movement.
She was a little dazed, but recovering fast, and was
soon rolling in the grass to get off the mud and the
skunk stink.
Trooper showed up,
coming out of the corn field. He had dirt on
his nose. Apparently he had found his own hole
and been working it. Too big to really go to
ground, he had finally given up and come to join the
party.
Larry came down the hill with all the equipment and
we settled down by the creek with both dogs
staked. Sailor was recovering fast, and we
checked her gums a few times. They were pink
and bright. The skunk must have blasted against
a den wall while making a turn, rather than giving it
directly into Sailor's face. Sailor got herself
out of the ground pretty quickly.
We were lucky.
A dog hit by skunk underground is totally different
from above ground (see SKUNK at http://www.fallingbranch.com/working/indexwork.shtml) . Unless the dog is
gotten out QUICKLY, the toxic fumes can overpower the
dog, drain the iron out of its blood and cause
horrendous other complications, not the least of
which is death. Dogs normally convulse, vomit
and go into shock unless gotten out within a few
minutes of being sprayed. But Sailor had been underground for no
more than five minutes, I think. In any case,
after about 25 minutes she seemed fine,
if stinky. Her gums were pinker than ours
(white gums is a sure sign of skunk-induced anemia
and shock), and Larry and I decided to continue the
hunt.
In almost
10 years of very active hunting, this was the first
skunk Larry had come across. In over 1,500
miles of hiking, I've only seen one other skunk
before.
We went up and
worked a groundhog sette located at the corner of the
pasture with exit holes on both side of the electric
fence. Sailor kept moving around underground,
but wouldn't give up. She whined some, but
never really bayed. With the electric fence
right above her, it was hard to get a fix on her
exact location, and she couldn't seem to pin the
chuck down in this four-eyed sette. We decided
to move on.
Sailor eventually
came out and joined us down the field where Trooper
had found a one-holed sette he was trying to squeeze
into. It was clear someone was home, and I
pulled off Trooper. Sailor went down the hole
like a silk scarf through a bracelet. We barred
the hole and located the tunnel. Larry had
called it exactly right -- the hole we cut in was at
a right angle in the tunnel, dead between the chuck
and the dog. Larry barred the back of the hole
behind the chuck, and it came into view through the
hole. Adios, groundhog. The chuck weighed
maybe 10 pounds -- bigger than Sailor for sure.
Breaking through to the den.
Note bar
hole below dog's head. West
Viriginia.
The next sette we
came to was pretty big and seemed pretty deep from
the sound of Sailor's baying. This one too was
in a corner of the pasture and completely
surrounded by electric fences, which again threw off
the locator box. Sailor seemed to be moving
around all over, and stopped barking pretty early
on. We cut into a section of the tunnel, but
there was no sign of a critter.
After a bit of conversation with the farmer mowing
the alfalfa field right next to us, we decided to
pull up stakes and move down the field to explore a
little more. We came to a location where a
groundhog hole had been opened up to a perfect
oval. We agreed it looked like a fox den, but
no on was home. Maybe next time.
We were starting
back to the car when Sailor went into the Mother of
all Multi-Flora Rose Patches, disappeared down a
groundhog hole, and proceeded to bay up a
storm. Here we go.
Larry said he
thought Sailor was right up against whatever it was,
and so we proceeded to try to hack our way into the
center of this jungle. This stuff was THICK and
wicked, but we eventually made a passable trail to a
three-hole sette . Sailor came out of the hole
and then dived back in. Trooper entered another
hole we had missed in the brambles -- we could hear
him thumping the ground, but we couldn't see him in
the thicket. After about three or four minutes
of initial baying from Sailor, she was quiet again. I eventually went to look for Trooper
and, after hacking my way into the center of the
briar thicket, found him completely underground with
only his tail reachable. I grabbed his tail
and, after a bit of a struggle, he popped out.
A 15-inch border terrier with a 19 inch chest is a
lot of dog in not-very-large woodchuck hole. I
was pretty amazed he got in as far as he did!
I hauled Trooper
back to the edge of the corn field and staked
him. Then I went back to where Larry was trying
to find Sailor in the thicket. We lined up all
the holes we could see and spent about a half hour
hacking away at the damn briar patch so we could use
the locator box and pole. We tried the locator
collar again. Nothing. We moved off and
waited for her to exit. Nothing. We went back
and tried the locator collar again.
Nothing. Just then, Sailor came up the back
side of the woods with an expression that seemed to
say "what the hell are you guys doing back
here?" We figure Sailor had bolted the
woodchuck out of still another hole we never
found. A good dog in a bad bit of Multiflora
Rose.
We headed back to
the truck, lost Sailor again (that dog really wants
to hunt) and Larry gave me an excellent lesson in how
to wash out a dog's eyes. We then settled in to
savor the really excellent beef jerky that Larry and
his wife Linda make.
After 8 hours in the field and two Mountain Dews, a
whole lot of great stories and laughter, I was
feeling excellent.
On the way
back to Larry's place, he pointed to all the
subdivisions, houses and min-malls where he used
to hunt. "Bolted a fox off that hill
before the houses" he said pointing to a couple
of big boxes with plastic
siding. "Used to take a lot of
'chucks in that pasture before it became a parking
lot" he said as we pulled past a
mini-mall.
Larry has amazing eyes. He stopped by the side
of the road and pointed to a critter on the edge of a
field about 300 yards away. I could barely see
what he was looking at even when he was pointing to
it -- and he saw it while he was DRIVING. The
only question he had was whether it was a groundhog
or a raccoon. When it shifted into better light, we
could see it was a BIG groundhog.
Back at the house
with the stink dog and Trooper, we had a
WONDERFUL dinner cooked up by Larry's wife Linda and
we sat around for an hour or so and told jokes.
I recounted the tale of my multiple electrocutions
for the amusement of all (we were working both sides
of a hot fence all day and I got nailed about five
times). Gail, Larry's daughter, took me through
Larry's hunting photo book -- great pictures of digs
and dogs, with some of the nicest fox shots (almost
all bolted) you ever saw.
The drive back
that night was with the windows down the whole
way. The pet stores were all closed, so
"Skunk Off" was not an option. The
stink dog got multiple baths with shampoo, peroxide,
baking powder, masengill, mouthwash, and even Simple
Green. Right now, she's not too
stinky, but she's sore all over. Me too. For therapy I've given her a couple of
massages, doused her eyes with liquid tears, poured
her a big bowl of sugar milk, given her extra food,
and put her on hot pad in my study where she has
stayed most of the day. As for myself I'm doing a fair amount of
Alleve.
If Sailor and I could do it all over again tomorrow,
however, we would in a heartbeat. Larry
Morrison is a great terrierman, a good story teller,
and a really fun guy to spend the day with. His
daughter is charming, his wife is a wonderful cook,
and between the three of them they have the best BS
meters going. My kind of people -- or at least
the kind of people I would like to be.
Stinkdog (Sailor)
with terrierman
extraordinaire, Larry Morrison.
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