The disadvantages of hellhounds and the stupidity of humans
About a fortnight ago Chaos caught his first rabbit. It was breath-snatchingly exciting for about fifteen seconds: if you’ve never seen a whippet-type sighthound out-jinking a rabbit it’s extraordinary. Rabbits can turn on nothing, and there’s forty pounds of long legs to Chaos, but he was turning with the rabbit as if he was glued to it, which is what whippets do. And then he calmly leaned over and picked it up mid-streak.
It went limp, and I assumed it had died of a heart attack which I believe is not uncommon. And Chaos trotted right up to me, bearing his tremendous prize, while I was still standing there like a doofus trying to get my breath back. Oh, gods, I’m an effete little useless middle-class wuss, what do I do with a dead rabbit? So I praised him extravagantly–and praised Darkness as well, who had been looking the other way when it all happened and was being very good now about not having done anything astonishing.* And then, taking a firm grip of his harness, asked Chaos to drop it. Which, after a moment, he did.
And it came to life again as it hit the ground and bolted. Chaos, for all his many faults**, is essentially a sunny-natured and forgiving hellhound, and he gave a little twitch of oh! But you let it get away!, and then looked up at me and wagged his tail: okay, whatever, you’re the Hellgoddess, now what?
Today we were walking beside a cow*** field, with only a couple of strands of barbed wire between them and us so absolutely no chance I’m going to let hellhounds off lead, although it’s a lovely big empty field we’re in. Usually I’m constantly scanning the ground for hazards† and usually I see them first. But I missed Chaos’ rabbit a fortnight ago . . . and I missed the rabbit today too.
This one was sick. There are suddenly a lot of mixy–mixymatosis††–rabbits around. This one was crouched in the middle of the field, looking like a bit of crunched-up autumn scrub. And the hellhounds were on it before I could hit the brakes on their leads. There followed a dreadful minute or so while I tried to drag them off it, and they were just rolling it over and over toward me as I pulled on the leads and it feebly tried to escape, and I’m screaming No no no no no which of course was making no sense to them at all. . . . And I’m a useless little middle class wuss, and while I know the theory of how to break a rabbit’s neck there is no way I’m going to experiment on a miserable dying rabbit which would probably be grateful for the help to get it over with.††† This one just about managed to creep away again once I got hold of the hellhounds, and I hope it came to its end more or less comfortably and undisturbed in a hedgerow.
There are a couple of additional things going on here, beyond the normal instincts of dogs and the wussiness of humans, that are blighting my mood at the moment. I keep these guys as pets when in fact they demonstrate several of the markers of good working dogs. One of them is that they both like carrying things around in their mouths. Another of them is how interested they are in the wildlife around them (although I would have said that any dog that wasn’t is dead). And the third and fourth, bang bang, are that Chaos brought me his rabbit ‘live to the hand’ as they say, which is what you want, and that he did so ‘soft mouthed’. I can’t swear to the fact that he hadn’t done it any damage because it got away, but the fact that it got away says he can’t have done it very much: trust me, it was going like the devil. But soft-mouthed is a big deal like bringing it to you is.
Some people say that dogs don’t like the feel/taste of a mixy rabbit, and a lot of dogs won’t pick one up.‡ So I can’t say that today’s performance proves anything about soft mouths, or about what they were trying to do with it, if I hadn’t got in their way. But I will say that in the condition it was in and with two of them, they could have killed it as fast as blinking, and they didn’t, and some of the time while I was screaming and pulling, they were behind it and rolling it toward me. So I’m sitting here thinking dolefully that here I have two working-bred longdogs who are obviously worth training‡‡ and I’ve probably screwed up their good, positive instincts about bringing prey to the hellgoddess in charge . . . and I just want a couple of companions, I don’t want dead rabbits. ‡‡‡
Sigh.
Tomorrow is another day. I just hope we don’t see any rabbits.
* * *
* Working sighthound owners of course see this every time their dog has a good run after a rabbit. It’s still amazing: it’s amazing that it can be done at all. The speed is exciting enough but the agility is flatly incredible. And the first of those 357.5 degree turns at blind-career speed should pop every tendon in the dog’s body.
** Let me tell you about his current eating ritual. On second thought, not tonight. I’m depressed enough already.
*** Well, steer field.
† You know I used to claim that walking was good plotting time
†† I’ve been trying to get on Wikipedia, which claims to have an entry, but it seems to be down as I write this. Wikipedia down?!? Mixy is a horrible disease–the rabbit develops lumps or tumours, and the skin around its eyes swells and the eyes themselves get infected, so the wretched thing can’t see which way to run, even if it had the strength to do so, which as the disease riots on, it doesn’t. And this is biological warfare–some criminal s.o.b. in a lab coat held up a test tube and said, Hey! Here’s the answer to the rabbit population! –And it isn’t even that. A few rabbits survive, and breed mixy-resistant children. And meanwhile it’s a horrible, horrible disease and even allowing for the fact that many people are stupid, clueless, and cruel, there are quite a few that aren’t, and I can’t understand how this plan was ever okayed and the salient test tube contents released into the countryside, both ours and Australia’s.
††† And I may be useless and middle class, but I’m bright enough to know that breaking the neck of something the size of a rabbit is going to take some skill
‡ I should note here somewhere that it’s rabbit-specific, or anyway that neither you nor your dogs can catch it. Non-wusses will eat mixy rabbit, and feed it to their dogs.
‡‡ Or would have been worth training: I think a hunter would say they’re a bit old to start now
‡‡‡ Although in the current economic climate, maybe I should get someone to teach me to break rabbit necks, and then to gut and skin them. And I’m an omnivore; it’s a bit like knowing how to sew on a button or give the Heimlich Manoeuvre: you may choose not to or never have to, but you ought to know how.
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