First Time Out

Hanging out at this blog, I have obviously been reading about and seeing pictures of tazis forever. Finally in Magdalena I got to see and interact with these fascinating dogs and see them in action. We've all been looking at pictures of the puppies, so it was a thrill to be able to go out with the two puppies Steve has kept, Larissa and Roza (formerly known as Fatty) on their first trip to the field with the pack.

Steve, Libby, Connie, me and Daniela Imre, a Bodio neighbor and fellow tazi owner/enthusiast, took the entire pack (including Lily the dachshund) out to two locations north of town for a run. And these dogs do dearly love to run. Here they are just out of the truck getting wound up to take off, with the pups doing their best to keep up.

If I remember correctly the dogs flushed two cottontails and a jackrabbit for chases but did not catch any of the three. The cottontails went down holes and the jack somehow gave them the slip. Plummer the lurcher was also a surprise to me. He is a faster accelerator than the tazis - more muscular, built like a sprinter - and was quicker off the mark with the rabbits. But in the long haul, the tazis kick into overdrive and zoom past him. So fast. After the two cottontails, the pack took a break in the shade of a juniper.

Larissa and Roza took a break, too. Actually they took two or three. They have a lot of growing and conditioning ahead of them to keep up with the adults. But they obviously loved the whole experience and showed the hunting instinct that Steve is breeding for.

The puppies ran hard, and were pretty much out of gas by the time we started back to the trucks. Libby and Daniela picked them up and carried them the last little way.

I thought it would be most effective for this post if Steve added his informed opinion of how the puppies first day in the field went.

STEVE'S COMMENTS

Steve here. Not much to add-- Reid is a good observer, as we know! This is very early season, first week running really. I would have been shocked if we had caught anything, other than a clueless adolescent bunny. Wait until it is cool...