When I entered my teen years my father had purchased a rabbit dog, Suzie, a Blue tick Beagle with a pink spotted belly and a deep, long bellowing bark.
She was our outside dog and my father and I built her a doghouse that could be seen from my bedroom window.
The house was insulated and had a flap of burlap bag nailed across the front opening of the doorway.
On extremely cold nights—which were few—we brought Suzie Q indoors to sleep in the back hallway just outside my bedroom door.
No matter what the weather, Suzie seemed pretty content to just lay around with one eye open in hopes of spotting a deer wandering near our garden.
She and the deer had never quite come to terms.
The deer didn’t seem to pay any attention to her bellows and she didn’t care much for their trespassing on our property to eat our string beans.
One particular Saturday morning my father went out to scoop Suzie from her impound to take her to chase bunnies.
When she saw my father coming without her food dish in hand she let out a long stretched-out howl that could be heard for a ten-mile radius.
Suzie wasn’t a big dog but she was a bit on the chunky side—mostly muscle.
When my father hooked her to the leash he handed it off to me so he could add some fresh hay to the floor of her home.
As he emptied out the old stuff and crammed in the new, Suzie hoisted herself up on her two back legs, slightly pulling me around the yard as if we were performing some strange circus dog act.
I guided her to the truck and with all my might I scooped her up and boosted her into the cab.
Suzie was neither house- or truck-broken, which made for an interesting drive down the road.
It was all I could do to keep her from taking the steering wheel out of my father’s hands.
When we finally arrived at the hunting ground Suzie bolted from the truck, pulling me out to the trail.
As my father and I strapped on our snowshoes I knew I was in for a battle to stay on my feet trying to hold back our enthusiastic dog.
But I just kept my legs moving forward and my toes up. I would have dropped back on my heels and let her pull me along like a waterskier if the snow wasn’t so deep.
My father was traveling slightly behind us and said, “Well, here are some fresh tracks.”
So I bent down and unleashed Suzie who was off like a shot. I looked down at the clip of the leash and noticed it was bent and mangled.
“Look at this!” I said to my father, displaying the leash.
“How did you break it?” he said with a grin.
We let Suzie chase rabbits for most of the morning and right through lunch.
Every so often we would hear her get on a good rabbit and circle back making her sweet low bellows.
Our biggest challenge at the end of the hunt was trying to grab the relentless and untiring dog as she raced by.
Mitch Lee, Adirondack native & storyteller, lives at Inlet. ltmitch3rdny@aol.com