Old hunting dogs

My dad is holding Huddles (dachshund), my uncle is holding Willy (beagle), and Fonzi (Norwegian elkhound) is barking at the gray fox they are holding on the table.

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Mother makes a fine cushion

Two old dogs, long gone but not forgotten.  Kizzy, the golden boxer, sits on Strawberry, her mother. It was their custom.

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Watching Amazon Prime

The film is The Savage Wild, which is a pretty good little film about wolves and dogs in the Yukon.

She likes watching dogs and wolves on TV, but if I put on a film about lions, she leaves the room.

 

 

 

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Cottonmouths in Kentucky

These do not live in West Virginia at all.

Don’t let anyone tell you they have seen one in West Virginia. That’s the northern water snake, which always gets called a “cottonmouth” or a “water moccasin.”

The copperhead, which is in the same genus, really should be called the “copperhead moccasin,” just to avoid confusion with the elapid with the same name.

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The Men from Earth

Here’s the story of these two men:

The truth is that outside of some Amish or Mennonite sects, there probably weren’t a dozen farmers living like this in the late 80s.

But the other truth is that we’re all descended from people who lived like this. In fact, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been such a revolution for our species that it’s pretty staggering how far we’ve come.

West Virginia was once full of people like this, including virtually all of my ancestors. They farmed and hunted and trapped and lived close to the land. They were beings of this planet, not the alien beings that we’re rapidly becoming.

 

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This is not a reindeer

This is a reindeer:

And Neil deGrasse Tyson drops a fact bomb:

 

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An Elegy for a Hound

Source.

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Redneck Santa

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Miley does what the wild dogs do

Miley appeared on the trail camera. She is checking out some red fox urine, but she’s pretty much doing what a coyote would do.

Of course, you can tell from previous videos that she’s quite a bit larger than those coyotes!

You can also see that she’s moving pretty well. Her TTA looks to have been a success.

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Git a long little doggy

This is me on Ginger Ale with Bull the farm collie in the background:

The photo was taken in my grandparents’ backyard.

 

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