Jungle Hounds and The Greater Good

Today I let the pups run in the early morning when it was only 78 degrees or so. I felt sticky in the heat, but I know by noon the house will be about 82 degrees and still feel like cool air conditioning when I come in from outside where it may climb to 100.

We've come into the Hot Season. It caught us off guard, because of a stretch of unseasonably cool days. Then the heat hit us a few days ago and still Elias and The Gute escaped together and ran off (to my great surprise as I was too hot to even assess my garden or bring in the clothes from the line.) It was a close call that day - they returned an hour later - Eli with heat stroke. He collapsed and I was afraid. Fabio and I had to carry his girth (it took both of us) out onto the grass so that I could cool him down with the hose. He gradually recovered, hour by hour, and returned to himself by the next day.

I can't trust Their sensibilities about these things. If there is a darting creature to pursue, a dog can't be expected to think of his own life before the greater good. (A hound's sense of the greater good being chasing all small creatures to kingdom-come and away from the house). So I let them out early this morning when it was only warm out, not hot. I Cautiously let them out together (which could be foolhardy because they might run to Guatemala or somewhere I cannot easily retrieve them) but they handled it perfectly well, staying in the jungle west of my house, which stretches about 1/4 mile on this hilltop unhindered to a north-south road through Kontiki, and bordered on the south by the east-west road that is my street and on the north by the meandering road into Mosquitoville (actual name). None of the roads are named, as far as I know. Except that in the neighborhood below me, where Fabio and I walk on Sunday evenings, someone made a sign designating Jaguar Street and a few others. But my road and the ones that encircle this hill in a 2 mile radius don't seem to be named.

The dogs stayed close enough that I could hear them bay in their hot pursuit.  If I give them an hour to run amok in the bush, then they stay close at hand and come back within 15 minutes of my calling them. (That's our rule.) However, if they have all day, that's when people in Guatemala might have a sighting. They are panting maniacally now, one outside on the grass, the other inside on the tile where I will have to mop later because of the pool of drool. I have mixed feelings about taking these North-Carolina-transplant-to-Wisconsin-now-Jungle Hounds back to the U.S., to city life. If he could catch his breath right now, Gute would tell you this is the best life they've ever had...(and if the afternoon should hold a dinner of any meats or bones, all the better).

Oh, my mistake, the panting has ceased and given way to snoring. I think it will be a very quiet afternoon in the jungle hideaway.