Lessons Best Learned Vicariously

P.S. I went back and took this picture once Bella and Blaze were secure in their kennels. Yes, the porky was still in the exact same spot.

"All coonhounds, even legends, must learn some bitter lessons. Toward the end of his first hunting season, Seth, this young prince, learned the painful experience of porcupines."                   
        -- From The Last Coon Hunter, Fifth Anniversary Edition, Chapter 18, "The Ascension"

Well, (the real) Seth's pups have good noses for sure.

    Further, it doesn't matter if a hound is six years or six months old, you know a "face bark" when you hear one.

    Last week, as we were headed home following an old logging trail in our woods (only about 400 yards from the kennels), both Bella and Blaze began barking loud and fast just ahead. I was on the other side of a blow-down white pine and couldn't see the pups, but the first words out of my mouth were, "Oh no!" (Truth in advertising: those weren't the exact words, but allow me a little leeway here.) 

    Whatever they were barking at was standing its ground. Not good.

    You might be surprised (or maybe you wouldn't) how fast a nearly 60-year-0ld man can run, particularly when pups are involved.

    Rounding that fallen tree, I saw the last thing I wanted to see--a porcupine. 

    And a clever porky at that, as it had buried its head inside a hollow log while exposing its tail. Thinking back to last January, I'd run across fisher cat tracks in the snow. (Also known as just "a fisher"--first cousin to the wolverine, not a feline nor the bird of a similar name--and one of the very few critters in Upstate New York that will actually kill and eat a porcupine.) This porky's tactic of protecting its head inside the log and only exposing its spines to protect its flank might even thwart a determined fisher.

    But at this moment, my only concern was protecting the pups. I've spent many a night pulling 600+ quills (which are barbed, by the way, making extraction that much more painful) out of a hound. I didn't have any particular plans for that night, but pulling quills would never make any "things-I-want-to-do-tonight" list.

    There's something to be said for providing the daily caring of your hounds, and even more so, spending many hundreds of hour in the woods with your dogs. Bonds of trust naturally form. When I shouted at the pups (after several shouts actually--again, truth in advertising), Bella and Blaze obeyed, and came to me. I praised them, and we headed down the trail for home. 

    Sans quills, I might add. Yeah, they have good noses. Smart, too.

    Now, there will come a night in these woods when I can't be right there with them, and these same pups will come face to face with another porcupine.

    There's a good chance at that encounter, curiosity will get the better of them, and I'll end up spending a late night pulling quills and saying, "I tried to tell you."

     It comes with the territory, I suppose. It is Painted Post, after all . . . even when some lessons are best learned vicariously.

Hoping your week is going well.

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