Many many coonhound photos

[bunn]

Darwin has settled in very well. He doesn't seem too worried about being here. Most of the time apart from on walks, he is asleep! Not sure if it has really sunk in yet that his people aren't coming back for him, but with a bit of luck that will sink in gradually... He is great with the cats, pretty good with other dogs (except Az finds him a bit annoying), clean in the house. Oh yes, and kid-friendly too. He is, however, a bit of a saggedy baggedy old dog to look at...



Hounds come in some very different shapes. Mollydog makes Darwin look extra-dumpy. Poor Darwin!


If I didn't know he was a coonhound, I'd have guessed some sort of basset cross, though his foxhoundy relatives are fairly obvious as well.


Sniffin' sniffin' sniffin!


Upside down


Upside down with *particularly* ridiculous ears...



If I'm honest, Az doesn't like Darwin all that much. Darwin likes Az, except that if he gets carried away with sniffin' sniffin' sniffin at Az, Az becomes peeved and eventually scruffs him. No real damage done, so I'm hoping Darwin will learn to treat Az a little more carefully. That said, both Az and Darwin *really* like home made sardine cake, which causes all differences to be forgotten.


Darwin and his equally lumpy shadow...



Utterly ridiculous ears which flap dramatically in the breeze.

Comments

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

That's really strange. A now-deleted LJ friend of mine kulan has four of them, all failed working dogs she's taken on from family and friends who hunt. I assumed they did hunt raccoons (though for vermin control/fun rather than food) but now you mention it, I never heard that said explicitly. I'm not sure what else you'd hunt with a coonhound, though. I will ask her next time I see her in IM, maybe I made a mis-assumption.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I admit, I've not looked very hard and didn't make a note of where I saw that!

Darwin has never been anything but a pet, according to the previous owners.

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

I'm having visions now of him treeing a raccoon and the raccoon can't stop laughing ;)

And in the spirit of having one of those moments where you think you've either got completely the wrong end of the stick or gone mad, I just did some googling, and there's quite a few sites out there about hunting raccoons with your coonhound. It just seems strange a coonhound resource wouldn't know that. I suppose it could be a weird kind of retrospective thing where the name came first and people invented a sport to match it!

[bunn.livejournal.com]

...eventually, the raccoon would stop laughing long enough to bop him on the nose, and he would fall over then run away, wowling tragically :-D

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

Heee :D The other day, my two chased an injured seagull off some bread and then stood there scoffing the bread while the seagull flopped about pathetically about a metre in front of their noses. I think I heard their respective terrier/foxhound ancestors rolling in their graves.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

:-D Mollydog would SO do that. Get off, seagull! MY bread!

Az, alas, is less greedy and has more of the killer instinct. I'm so glad his eyesight is failing now! He definitely considered himself an everything-that-moves-hound. Only his innate gormlessness prevented him being a lethal hunter. :-/

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

Didn't he bring down a deer once or something? Which is horrible but also actually really impressive.

(I've run out of beagle icons D:)

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid so - only roe deer though. The book 'the Working Lurcher' is very disparaging about roe deer 'A labrador could catch them' it says. He's had a couple of squirrels too. It's amazing the number of places that turn out to have deer and/or squirrels...


(I've run out of beagle icons D:)

:-oooooooo

[bunn.livejournal.com]

... should probably make clear that Az has never *killed* a deer - or even seriously hurt one. He used to knock them over and then hold them down until I came panting up to haul him off. Once I realised that apparently *every sodding field and bush* around here has a roe deer in it, I kept him muzzled to stop him grabbing them.