With the summer temperatures, the only safe hikes with dogs occur along streams and/or during dawn/dusk. There is also the option of night hiking but I've all but abandoned that because of my dogs' fondness for rooting out boar and porcupines.
Of course, dusk hikes present similar problems because as the forest creatures begin making their treks toward food and watering holes, the dogs' prey drive goes into overdrive. Tippy is especially prey driven and likes nothing more than darting into bushes to flush out irate ground birds or offend a hapless boar with eardrum splitting yelps of excitement. Thankfully she is only about the chase and not interested in any follow up action, not that this reassures me when she's after quilled or tusked prey.
This weekend, Tippy seemed much more focused than usual and it was not especially surprising when she darted off into the brush and disappeared for five minutes. She kept disappearing into the brush and appearing somewhere ahead of my plodding pace until finally she took off like a furry rocket after something. After a few minutes, we heard her excitedly barking in the distance and called her back (recall when she is in this kind of a state does eventually work but not immediately). She returned, panting hard with her tongue practically dragging on the ground and looking mighty excited.
A few minutes later, we came upon this set of tracks, clearly from our Tippy.
And then...
Well, it looks like our barking mad dog was tracking and chasing a barking deer. The best response to being chased is to stop running, like our neighborhood cats have learned, because Tippy is not interested in stationary prey. I doubt that the deer cares much for this advice.
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