Nice story Cliff
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I've had dogs all my life, growing up on a dairy farm we had a small pack of them roaming about around the farm. I've never been without a canine buddy or should I say a gang of 'em lol. I used to have lurchers and working terriers and did a lot of hunting with them all.
When I was 16 my dad got me a dog who stands out in my memories more than all the others... a Jack russell I named "Gyp" who was the best dog i've ever had, I still can't belive how clever the dog was. As an example, he would walk up to a rabbit hole stick his head in it, take a couple of deap breaths and if there was a rabbit in residence he would turn and stare into my eyes telepathically drilling it into my mind that there was some one home, if there was no rabbits in residence he would just walk on making a point of not looking at me. He'd even retreive the ferrets to me without killing them (I always had the ferrets nice and tame and used to the dogs), if a ferret was no good I only had to give him the words "shake it" and it was despatched in an instant. I was once on a shooting trip up Scotland with two of my m8's and Gyp was ignoring lots of large rabbit sets that looked well used and my m8's said Gyp was wrong and that the sets needed to be ferreted as they must have bunnies in them. I left them to it and walked on with Gyp. Me and Gyp had about 30 or more rabbits before hearing a single shot from one of my m8's. Shorty after I heard the shot they both walked round a hill carrying a single rabbit. They where laughing and had to addmitt that the rabbit they had was full of myx'y and they'd blown it's head off while it was sat there to try and hide the fact it was myxied. They'd ferreted a few sets that looked great, freshly kicked out soil and droppings outside the holes and had nothing to show for it...Gyp was always right LOL.
I still have a bunch of dogs that are mainly for showing but some of them do like to hunt...even though they snatch the occassional rabbit or pheasant they just can't run fast enough to catch a hare or a deer that they insist on chasing whilst in full battle cry. I think some of the hares actualy enjoy tormenting the dogs and it's a bit of a game now, until one stumbles
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Forgot to mention the fact that I don't take 'em fishing, they'd be bored in less than half a minuite and would cause havock!
