Hope springs eternal

I’ve only once in my life witnessed a dog catch a healthy squirrel. Okay, technically, I didn’t actually see Sam catch the squirrel; by the time I came into the picture Sam was industriously digging a hole in anticipation of burying the critter for later…   Well, we don’t actually know what he intended to do with it since his dog brain had clearly not grasped the fact that convincing the squirrel to hold still whilst he buried it alive was going to be problematic, at best.

At any rate, however he accomplished the feat, Sam did in fact hold in his gentle jaws a full grown squirrel that was in no way disabled, as demonstrated by the lightning flash it created on its way under the fence when Sam reluctantly let it go in response to my order. So we know that at least one dog has been able to catch a squirrel.

Just not Zoey the Small and Annoying. She has never come within ten feet of any of the half dozen bushy-tailed rodents she starts out after on a typical afternoon. Zoey is fleet of foot, I’ll give her that.  But it does no good at all to be quick when you announce your intent to attack with a series of barks that precedes your arrival at the squirrel’s starting location by several seconds. Furthermore – and you’ll recall my description of this in an earlier post – dogs simply do not understand the Pythagorean Theorem, which means they end up running two legs whilst their prey scampers to safety along the single leg.

Zoey’s forays into rodent hunting inevitably end in a madly barking dog at the base of a tree or at the interstice of two fence lines or occasionally, her squirming butt and wildly wagging tail poking up out of the  space under the shed to the accompaniment of much muffled doggie bark sounds.

Her attempts to capture one of the backyard denizens are numerous beyond counting and no matter how many times she winds up looking silly, I don’t believe Zoey will ever tire of the chase. Somewhere in the recesses of her little walnut-sized doggie brain resides an unreasoning but unquenchable spark of hope that someday, some way she will finally capture a squirrel.

Yeah, that’ll happen…