The resident JRT going to ground.
If you have ever been to the Sonoma County Fair and managed to get over to watch the sheep dog trials, it’s a wonder to see the work ethic of the Border Collies and other herding dogs.
Just recently, I started my littlest, youngest dog in a new sport called K9 Nose Works. It essentially uses a dog’s natural, immense ability to sniff out scents as a way to play an elaborate game of hide and seek. As I work this game with my little Jack Russell Terrier (JRT) mix, I am constantly wowed by her “dogged” determination to find the hidden scent. We have days of fun with this.
But what perhaps is even more fun is to watch her do her real job of finding gophers. For anyone who has tried to farm the loamy soil of western Sonoma County, gophers are a pain. I am admittedly not humane when it comes to these rodents. From an early stage, Vespa has been adept at finding live holes, at which we set traps. Yes, she sometimes will get a gopher, but her real joy is searching out the tunnels.
Friday was a day like that. The recent rains had softened the soil and the gophers were using the break in the weather to move out of flooded dens and digging new ones. Vespa was right there with them. She found a nest under our rhubarb plant. (I am not crazy about rhubarb so that find wasn’t high on my priority list, but she had fun.)
She worked one tunnel track for almost an hour.
I would likely not have a gopher problem if I had enough JRTs on the job, but then I would have a JRT problem.
I wonder what is worse……
Vespa hard at work:
