Never Buy a $35 Rabbit Dog

Growing up in South Central Kentucky offered a lot of opportunities for hunting and fishing.  Besides Green River Lake State Park practically being in our back yard, we had lots of farmland with cornfields mixed with woodland, and farm ponds stocked with fish as well.  My father always enjoyed fishing, but never took up hunting.  A baseball and basketball coach, he enjoyed most other athletic activities, but hunting was never an interest for him. 

My introduction to hunting came from my best friend, Henry.  Henry’s dad, James, ran the Campbellsville location of the family dairy business; the headquarters of which was in Harlan in Eastern Kentucky where James grew up.  James came from a family of hunters and his love of shooting, hunting, and working with dogs rubbed off on Henry.  Henry’s maternal grandmother had a farm in our county that offered small game opportunities, and a couple of her neighbors didn’t mind us hunting the fencerows of their cornfields for rabbits.  An added benefit of hunting “Grandmaw’s” farm was that upon returning to her house after a cold morning in the field we often scored a hot meal of soup beans and cornbread, and the occasional plate full of fresh no-bake chocolate oatmeal cookies.  (Henry and I never left many of those for Grandmaw.)

                                                                                                                     Stock Photo(not Zeke)

Even before Henry urged me into hunting, he had a beagle as a pet.  “Feller” was the first beagle I ever heard on the trail of a rabbit.  He had a deep bellowing bark that quickened and raised in pitch the hotter the trail became.  I was fascinated by the fact that a rabbit being trailed by a dog would circle back in an attempt to elude the tracker, ostensibly to be greeted by “hot lead” from the waiting hunters.  I don’t remember whether Feller met his demise or just disappeared (a good beagle was as likely to be stolen as run over by a car), but by the time I started hunting with Henry on Grandmaw’s farm, we were relegated to kicking the brush and fencerows ourselves and relying on quick reaction time and sharp shooting to drop a rabbit.  (Henry was considerably better at it than me).  However, there was an empty chain link dog kennel on the farm and Henry and I decided to form a joint venture and purchase 2 beagles to use for running rabbits. 

Henry and his dad got a lead on a nice looking beagle for sale.  I remember Henry telling me his dad sat in the car and let Henry do the litter picking and negotiating.  As Henry perused the litter, James was about to “eat the steering wheel” trying to will Henry into choosing what James deemed to be the “pick”.  They came away with a quality rabbit dog we named Zeke.  Good color and head shape to go with a sturdy frame, and worth the $100 investment.  No small price for a dog in the mid-70's. 

I followed a referral from a school friend, to an uncle who had a beagle for sale.  This fellow lived in town and had a pen in his back yard with more than one dog in it.  The beagle for sale was a small-bodied, mostly black male named Paddle.  The price was right, only $35.  I remember asking the guy if he would “guarantee” this dog.  He looked at me with a blank stare and stiff upper lip and said, “I guarantee he’ll run rabbits.”  It was an uncomfortable assertion, but my experience reading body language as a teenager was limited and I simply took him at his word.  Down deep, I knew Paddle didn’t match the pedigree of Zeke, but the “bargain” blinded me into believing I’d scored a deal on the second half of our hunting dog stable.  Turned out to be a stinging lesson in getting what you pay for.

Zeke had all the right attributes of a quality rabbit dog; great nose, good disposition and obedient.  Paddle, on the other hand, manifested signs of mental retardation.  Medical science hadn’t invented Attention Deficit Disorder at that point in time, but Paddle was afflicted with severe doggie ADD.  They don’t make Ritalin in strong enough dosage to cure the malady from which that dog suffered.  He wouldn’t come when called, didn’t take to any training at all, and despite his yelping in the field, never ran a rabbit that I can recall.  I can remember Henry’s frustration with Paddle to the extent he suggested we “ship him off to the glue factory”.   

Zeke would have been a great hunter, but when you’re spending all your time trying to bring the ADD dog in line, the quality animal suffers for lack of attention.  (Probably a lesson for schoolteachers in there somewhere) 

I don’t really remember how long we had those 2 dogs, less than a season I believe.  One day Henry was returning from the field with them and they got up near the road ahead of him.  We believed someone came along in a vehicle and took the opportunity to get one good rabbit dog.  They may have thought they were getting two, but I suspect Paddle disappointed even a low-down hunting dog thief.

In retrospect, $35 was no bargain at all for a rabbit dog.  An expensive lesson at the time, because I always thought that without Paddle, Zeke would have stayed closer in the field and we wouldn’t have lost the $100 investment we had in him.  I always felt responsible and a little embarrassed to have my acquisition turn out so poorly.  If Henry and I had set out to spend $135, we’d have been better off giving the extra $35 to Zeke’s owner and just hunting with the one dog.

I’m not saying the more expensive option is always the best value, and I’d be less than truthful if I told you that I never again repeated the mistake of buying the cheaper option that ended up a bad deal.  But, when your gut tells you something isn’t quite up to your quality standards, and you see that blank stare and stiff upper lip in the seller, keep looking until you find a better “dog”.