January 2017, about 3:30 a.m. on a moonless sub-freezing night – and I sure didn’t want to get out of a warm cozy bed. The nervous tapping of the inside-dog’s nails on the floor echoed as he paced around the dark bedroom. Something was bothering him. When I listened, I could hear the distant sound of the outside-dog’s repeating slow bark – the same alert he gave whenever Granny stepped out of her house.
Granny, 84, lived in a home situated over a small rise about 500 feet from our house, deep in the rural Ozark Mountains. Elderly, forgetful, hard-of-hearing, arthritic, and independent, she lived by the sun – up at dawn, and tucked into bed at sunset. The outside-dog, a thick-coated Collie, had assigned himself a single job: barking in a leisurely manner whenever Granny opened her front door. That’s what he was doing now. Surely, Granny wouldn’t go outside in the middle of the night in this weather!
I dressed slowly, grumbling. I bundled up in a heavy jacket, hat, and warm boots. The inside dog watched and waited, knowing he was going to get a jaunt outside. This dog was new to us – somebody had dumped him on our rural roadway about a month before. He arrived starving and bewildered. We already had several dogs, and didn’t need another one, especially a big, solid black Pitbull x Labrador Retriever x Something Else mix.Continue reading“Train Your Tracking Dog – Part 1, by Dogdancer”
