The Making Of Little
A High Plains farm at midnight. The images are easy enough‑‑clapboard farmhouse, weathered barn behind it. The windmill’s rusted to a stop. One yard light fixes on a monotonous patch of tractor‑rutted mud. Beyond tree windbreaks, clear and level ground surrounds on all sides.
But this October night, this farm scene, calm and cool, breaks in a sudden, is literally torn apart. 360 greyhounds are barking‑‑360 greyhounds on the move.
In the long dog runs, the adolescent litters bound along the fences their barking rising and falling with the intensity of 30 speeding freight trains rushing in different directions. From the kennel, the older dogs, locked in their cubicles, sound to be barking into tin cans‑‑60 tin cans at 60 tempos. The brood bitches scream from the doors of their whelping houses. Their puppies tumble in confusion in the hay.
All of this is in welcome. The rabbit man cometh.
In the farthest long run, Little, the young brown and brindle bitch, stands apart from the exuberant litter she does not belong to. She is new to this gang having been introduced only the week before‑‑carefully, very carefully watched, so that the litter does not tear her apart.
Little stands back, but she too barks, legs slightly spread, head up, ears sharply pointed, large eyes brightly larger, unfocussed, truly mad.
And it is madness. 360 raving greyhounds.
At this moment, the greyhounds are a single, articulate need. They are a rowdy urge, a libido at fever pitch.
Their deadly feuds are ignored, no playing, no digging, no standing in the water troughs, no mock sexual gaming. Even Little, passive and shy from too much human handling, has forgotten her fear, her uniqueness. For the time she too is all greyhound, part of one murderous, ancient essence.
The rabbit man has arrived.
Under the bedroom light in the farmhouse, Steve and Georgia are moving too. They clamber with aching bones into their clothes–work clothes infused to the fabric core with the sweet perfume of greyhounds.
Husband and wife might have something to mumble to each other, 12:45 of a Tuesday morning. This couple isn’t given the chance.
The greyhounds have gone berserk. The rabbit man waits.
The coffee pot has been left on for this occasion. Steve is already shambling from it to the back door, cup in hand, his hair uncombed and down to his shoulders, long beard falling to the middle of his chest. A tired, big man. His dog man shuffle is more pronounced than ever.
He calls it that, sly smile. “Wanna see my dog man walk,” he’ll ask. And truthfully, because the dog men do walk stooped from communing with so many thigh‑high creatures, from years of lifting 70‑pound males. They go head forward and eyes averted, from looking always where they step; taking short, light and close steps‑‑from so much wading through mobs of greyhounds.
Georgia is taking a minute to dress, to push her hair up under a stocking cap, to rouse Jonathan, Steve’s younger brother, ten years younger, the hired hand for the time being with a shout at the bottom of the stairs. She wears the same kind of clothes Steve does‑‑worn out jeans, a faded sweatshirt, a bulky sweater with a hundred holes snagged by a hundred greyhound teeth left from their roughhouse adoration for any human. The boots are rubber. Maine lobster boots. The only things tough enough to abide a dog farm, soft enough not to break greyhound toes.
This is a greyhound’s world, fitted, tailored, bespoke in every detail.
Georgia juggles her own coffee cup, grabbing up the checkbook, searching in a rush through the loose pile of broken muzzles, leads, used worm caps and syringes that covers the kitchen counter. “There was a pen here yesterday,” hurried speech, a woman who has 360 greyhounds begging in her ear.
The greyhounds never miss a beat. They’ve gotten inside of you. Their chorus of pain, sometimes joy, pumps right along with your heart. Georgia claims she doesn’t hear it anymore, never pays it any mind. But she’s moving fast, like it was part of her, some haunting call she alone must answer.
Unperturbed, the rabbit man sits in his pickup, tilted in deep ruts. He keeps the motor running. The headlights beam out onto the distant wall of the kennel, sweep along the run fences. The light catches a constellation of dog eyes. Dogs watching, waiting, barking.
This rabbit man has a name, but it’s never used. As with so much in the greyhound business, the man and his function have been simplified to the basics. He is the rabbit man.
Once a mouth he comes like this, bringing the live jacks in the middle of the night, jacks fresh off the prairie. He drives the old pickup from his place near Muleshoe, Texas, cross the Oklahoma panhandle and into Kansas. Along the way he stops at dog farms here and there, leaving off the orders. When he drives south again, his truck bed is quiet.
The rabbit man is an idol of an old timer. He never moves from the cab, never turns off the engine, never lingers on the farm for longer than it takes to drop off the jacks. It’s also a self‑service operation.
Steve and Georgia have an order for 20 jacks.
“Hey, how ya doin’,” Steve is setting his coffee cup on the truck hood to jitter along with old pistons, he’s making his dog man walk to the back.
“Count for dead ‘uns,” twangs the rabbit man.
The rabbits are in narrow, foot‑high, wooden crates, with lattice tops and bottoms, as long as the truck bed itself. The bottom crates are empty, those stacked on top pulse furtively, smell savage. In the quarter moonlight, jack rabbit ears can be seen poking through the lattices, long ears waving in the shadows like exotic plumes.
When Steve pulls on the top crates, sliding it forward, the wood trembles with hidden life.
Georgia comes nudging Jonathan out of the house. Jonathan comes half dressed, shoelaces dragging. His face sleepwalks.
Jonathan has been living on the farm ten months now, helped with the jacks ten times. He still must be told, step by step, what to do. Told and watched constantly. He dreams awake, in another reality.
Steve and Jonathan pull a crate from the truck and lay it on the ground. With a flashlight fixed, Steve begins to count, looking for dead jacks as he goes, The bodies are jammed up indistinguishable one from another, a quivering congestion of ears, eyes, hind legs, a frantic scratching, a helpless cowering.
When the process of counting is complete the Windhound Kennel order is carried to the cab window for the rabbit man’s inspection.
“Hold her up so’s I can see,” says the rabbit man, squinting. “Dead?”
“One didn’t make it,” says Steve.
The rabbit man has the cab light on. It shows him old and skinny, a hide like West Texas earth. He jabs a pencil stub at a scrap of notebook paper taped to the dashboard, one finger pointing crooked as barbed wire, the nail like barn wood.
In the seat beside him an ancient greyhound bitch stirs. She shows an old battle scarp livid as raw liver, half way down her flank. (“She come from the meanest litter I ever did raise,” he’ll tell you. “They half‑way skinned her alive ‘for I could pull her loose.”
These Jacks have hypnotized Jonathan, who tends to romanticize it all. Fresh college diploma with no job for it. Steve pushes him on with the crates. They lug them off into the darkness. The jacks stop still as death as if a snake were among them.
The greyhounds haven’t wearied of barking. They’ve made the farm night steamy with the lustiness of flesh for flesh. Their expectation is taut, as if the kill were imminent. 360 coils are steel tight and ready to pop.
Georgia writes out the check on the pickup hood, knowing full well that this old rabbit man is giving her the eye. He wants $8 a head. It isn’t cheap anymore, not like days gone when the jacks came in from western Kansas, healthy jacks, as many as you wanted, and at a buck each.
Handing over the check, Steve asks the rabbit man the usual, “Any jacks left down your way?”
As ever, the rabbit man gives a coy chuckle. “Yep, there’s jacks. But not as many as there was before.”
The rabbit man puts the check in his cashbox‑‑a Revised Standard Version of the Holy Bible. Money and checks are kept in Revelations.
Another solemn chew on his Red Man and the old man seals the deal with a spit into the Folger’s coffee can that’s wired to the dashboard.
“Gotta move these rabbits. See ya next month. If we’re still kicking.”
Rabbit man is going, pickup in gear, rolling slowly on the dirt road that cuts through empty country far as the night will let you see. Nary a farm light to be seen, only the rabbit man’s lonesome tail lights.
Soon Steve, Georgia, Jonathan, they’re gone quick as they can back to bed. In another minute the house lights are out. Tomorrow begins at 5:30, too soon to bear.
In the kennel, dogs and bitches alike settle back for their own night time. They lie in their cubicles, on rugs and cut newspaper, black button noses pointed towards the door, sleek heads on paws, sometimes sleeping, sometimes just lying there, sighing softly, eyes open, large-almond greyhound eyes, sane now, focused on a less violent world.
Heat lamps make the whelping houses bright and warm. The brood bitches sneeze from the dust in the hay. Good mamas lie down for their puppies. The neurotic, from some high strung bloodline thousands of years old, prance like ballerinas, paps sagging full, ignoring their little ones.
Puppy pens and long runs are also at peace. The litters curl up together in their run houses, heads on each other’s stomachs just like wee puppies, doing as they have done since birth.
In her run, the standard pen 10 feet wide and 300 feet long, Little sleeps outside the run house. The five brothers and sisters in the litter have cast her out, a stranger. They growl when she moves.
She is well named, small and too quiet‑‑ little in everything at 11 months. She barely survived the disease that swept the farm when she was a puppy, killing 50 dogs including her dame and litter mates. Originally at board on the farm, her owner ordered her destroyed; meaning Steve and Georgia have no business keeping her alive on the sly, hiding her, giving her a chance. One final chance to show promise for the race track.
Little stays safely clear of the run house, alert much of the night. Lifting her head now she nudges the darkness with her long snout, whimpering softly, looking about as if watching for the man to come.
On how many nights like this have the greyhounds stirred, waiting for the hunt to begin?
It’s a familiar union‑‑greyhounds, hares and man. The Queens of Egypt had the scene painted on the walls of their tombs. Something that old seems like a dream in itself. Greyhounds, hares and Queens, it should be. That’s why their coursing is called, the sport of Queens. This ancient breed has always been noble, elegant.
The allure of coursing expresses what the racetracks conceal with glitz-‑greyhound racing is something primitive and bloodthirsty. Greyhounds in the last stage of their training for the racetracks are trained to run their fastest with live jacks.
And the sport of coursing remains the dog man’s ideal, even for the overworked and hard pressed, for Steve and Georgia. Their farm takes on a special urgency on the morning when the coursing park is to be used. As if a ceremony to come was meant to elevate the commonplace drudgery of all other mornings.
The dogs are already high. Fights are more likely than ever. The kennel is shrill. The brood bitches step on their puppies. In the long runs the litters roam anxiously, their pack instinct up.
Within half an hour of first light Little has been cornered twice, nipped by the big fawn dog that rules her run. While the litter paces the fences she takes refuge under the run house.
Steve and Jonathan are out at dawn to keep peace. An orange sun turns this river bottom land red.
The men begin rounding up the jacks, standing stooped over and awkward in the rabbit pen. Sometimes this means running and falling, cursing as a jack slips from your hands. It looks like a game but it’s hard work. Jacks aren’t Bugs Bunny. Their hind legs are as powerful as pistons. Their strength is incredible. Their claws are long.
The jacks jerk and fling themselves with the gusto of home‑run hits against the rabbit pen fence.
All around this scene, the greyhound frenzy rises to its peak. 360 greyhounds convinced that the hunt has commenced, the killing underway, and they’re being left out.
The sun’s hanging ghostly by the time the last jack is cornered and carried kicking to the crates and then at last to the coursing park. There isn’t time to go back to the house for breakfast. There’s morning turnout and feeding to attend to. Steve wants the coursing started by 9:00.
“When you’re done there, start picking up the turnout yard,” Steve tells Jonathan.
“Keep moving, ’cause you’ll need to take a shovel along and fill up any hole you find. Don’t want a single hole this morning. They’ll all be running soon as the coursing starts. Look sharp as you go for the gates and fences. Put Annie, Jeb, Cream and those Venerated pups in that North run so they can’t jump the fences. Be sure to lock Jessie’s gate. You know how he can open it himself when the rabbits are running.”
Steve gives these orders standing at the stove in the kennel kitchen. Steve will have to check everything his brother does, holding back his impatience while Jonathan plods through.
The orders are simple, but the execution takes a strong arm and a level head. Each task means something, something essential to a dog man.
A dog man has to be thinking at all times of his temperamental and child‑like charges, each of which is worth thousands of dollars. These are spirited, sensitive animals that can, and will, kill each other in seconds.
Working his way along Steve keeps a constant crooning going. “Yes, yes, that’s right, you a big girl now, that’s right. Hello boy, that’s the boy, yes, you’re OK . . .”
He’s come to the pen with the ‘Carrie Nations’ where Little is kept. They’re a handsome litter‑‑litters are identified in a clump by their dame’s track name until they go into the kennel and receive an individual “farm” name, such as Nick or Sally. The fancy track names are to please the betting crowd.
The Carrie Nations are a month younger than Little, but ready for their first rabbit. They include two red fawn dogs and three fawn bitches. Little is a type, a Lord Orwell brindle, marble like with a deep brown snout and paws. She stands out clearly as different.
When Steve enters the run Little crawls halfway out from her hiding place. She gives Steve her greyhound grin, ears floppy and looped over, eyes attentively fixed on him.
The litter has already divided into its usual pecking order for feeding. Steve has a separate dish just for Little. She trots at his heels to a secluded spot behind the run house. He doesn’t need to look to know she’s following. Once to her feeding spot she wedges herself between his legs and leans to one side hugging him tight with a flank. Long nose pokes up at him, obviously she’s for him him to touch her.
Steve stands guard until Little finishes her meal. Then he talks.”Little’s gonna take like that rabbit? Is she?” To the sound of his baby talk voice she stares at him sideways, showing the whites of her eyes, flirting, making the soft puffing of the lips that are the greyhound’s ultimate sign of affection.
He bends to slide his hands over her, checking her out. Dog men have no time for idle petting, every time they handle a greyhound it counts for something.
Little takes the checking stoically. Most greyhounds can’t contain themselves long enough to stand still. They have motion in their blood. Their God is man. Undoubtedly, everything about this young bitch is unusual. Steve acknowledges that it’s a gamble keeping her. If she doesn’t show interest in the jacks, if she doesn’t come up with some speed, if she isn’t aggressive in the coursing park, then Steve and Georgia will have to sit down and make a decision. They’ll have to decide whether it’s worth hiding her for another month, another chance, or time to say farewell with a shot of pentobarbital.
With feed bills alone at more than $40 a month per greyhound a dog man can’t afford to let sentiment rule his head.
For Little this morning is make‑it or break‑it. This may be her first and last rabbit.
In the adjoining run Jonathan is prodding earth with a shovel, picking up dog shit and plopping it into a bucket. Behind him the dogs are busily digging up the holes he’s already filled.
“I’ll start turnout. You pick up the pans.” Steve tells him. He knows his brother. When Jonathan arrived he’d told him. “Remember, this isn’t Steinbeck.”
In turnout every greyhound wears a muzzle. Even then a dog will work tirelessly to tear the muzzle off. Some do. That’s when the fights can start. During turnout Steve is a prison guard.
First batch comes out, fired up, charging around the yard, sniffing, squatting, lifting their legs. The yard sharpens with the ringing clatter of muzzles being dragged along the fence. Greyhound music.
The change from the younger dogs in the long runs to these sleek, muscular adults is awesome. They’ve become a different creature entirely‑‑these calmer, surer dogs with their massive haunch muscles, tiny abdomens. A yard full of professionally raised racers is a field of muscle.
Georgia has brought Steve’s breakfast down from the house. In the morning light, she’s a slight, pretty woman, a blonde with a fiery temper. She’ll tell with pride how she’s run this kennel all by herself when Steve’s been sick. That’s something for a woman who weighs 90 pounds. A stud on its hind legs is as tall as she is.
With her at the fence, the greyhounds crowd close, boxing each other with their muzzles, darting her wide glances.
“Anybody would be crazy to get caught in this business,” she’ll say. “Nothin’ goes right for you. The dogs get sick, the dogs die. The dogs won’t run worth a damn, the customers cheat on their board bills, the tracks keep you begging. All a bunch of God damn gamblers and outlaws. We haven’t had a vacation in 15 years.”
Face impassive, a sometimes-bitter twist to her mouth, such trifles doesn’t fool the greyhounds. They could be invisible to Georgia as if she didn’t actually see them crowding to be near her. They pick something up from her, you can see that clearly. Perhaps they know in their dog way that it’s she who keeps the all‑night vigil with the whelping mother, bottle feeds the sick puppies, mourns secretly when a dog dies.
For his part Steve emanates in his every action, in his every tone, a deep and fundamental rapport with the greyhound. It’s a gut understanding, clinical and yet oddly intimate. It’s reminiscent of basic training under a hard sergeant with a soft heart.
Steve whistles from the kennel doorway. The dogs trot obediently in. It’s the last of the turnout.
Jonathan stands lost in thought, shit bucket at his feet.
“OK then,” announces Steve. “Let’s get those rabbits.” The farm pulse quickens. It’s time for the coursing.
The coursing park is a short way from the kennel, situated across the open field from its counterpoint in the schooling program, the training track. The park is enclosed by a shoulder high corrugated fence. From a distance it looks utterly anonymous.
Inside is a large open space of turned earth, perhaps three acres. The ground has been freshly worked‑‑Steve ran the disk‑harrow over it the previous afternoon. The field smells of virgin soil. The area is 1,000 feet long and spreads in a wedge shape widening 100 to 300 feet in width.
On a Fall morning like this the sunlight cuts down gold‑white and tangible. Wind raises dust devils in the field. It’s an old fashioned harvest morning.
To the coursing park it gives an aura of loneliness‑‑no crowd, no human chatter. This is an isolated time and place, the nearest farm house more than a mile away. Reinforces that what’s about to happen here isn’t meant for ordinary folk.
Like everything else on the farm the dog trailer is part of the program. Steve uses it to haul the dogs to and from the coursing park and training track, short as those distances are. Greyhounds move in such trailers from farm to farm, track to track. Getting accustomed to the roll and pitch of such travel is just another part of a pup’s education.
This morning Steve is coursing separate trailer loads of kennel dogs and of older pups from the runs. He begins with the kennel. He’s already grouped the dogs into several coursing trials, figuring out a rather complex scheme based on age and condition, on compatibility, trying to keep the experienced separated from the inexperienced. He’s organized this first trailer full of 30 dogs into eight trials, one per hold.
A brindle stud is first out, a hunk athlete, tightly muzzled, bounding for where Jonathan waits with lead in hand.
“First hole,” calls Steve. Jonathan nods, grappling with the fiery stud.
Steve turns out another dog, a big blue bitch, snorting deliriously at the gate.
“Keep movin’ there, no beatin’ off!” shouts Steve, tension in his face.
Jonathan gives a sarcastic laughs, knowing his brother. Georgia shoots Steve the finger, screaming “Don’t you yell at me mister! I’ll go back to the house and let you do this all by yourself! There’s a month of billing to do on the kitchen table!”
Passions, human and canine, ride high on a coursing morning.
Last of the dogs out of the trailer and Steve brings up the two relief dogs, Ellie and Maynard.
Relief dogs are indispensable. A good relief is highly prized. They’re seasoned, quick turning, older dogs. If the pack can’t catch the jack after hard coursing the reliefs are turned loose to finish the job. Uncurbed, Greyhounds can run the muscles off their backs.
Steve lets the uproar rip, calmly taking time to carefully check out the starting box. It’s the same type used at the tracks. The box has sliding rear doors for loading and a hair trigger front gate with a deadly kick when it springs up. It takes his entire weight to press the gate down and catch it closed.
Stepping safely clear he tests the lever. The gate pops open like a switch blade, tingling the air. A sharp, crisp, racetrack sound it makes.
The pups don’t take well to the box. First time in and they think they’re being murdered, they howl and turn upside down, kicking against that small dark enclosure. Clearly, a dog is a dud that can’t learn to take the starting box‑‑betting crowds don’t take well to a greyhound coming out of the box at Flagler rear first and on its back.
Steve has the muzzles in hand‑‑on the training track and in the coursing park, those are the only times an adult greyhound can be left unmuzzled with his fellows.
Georgia stands at the fence, stop‑watch in hand. She does the timing for each trial. Notes down which dog gets the kill. Which shows poorly.
With a rough gesture, like a last rite, Steve slips open the rabbit crates and prods the first jack out with a stick.
The world speeds up, fast forward and lifting off.
Jack staggers a few wobbly paces, stops, rears on its hind quarters, ears perked, paws up, chattering to itself.
“Hi hi hi,” Steve does his hunched‑up run, long hair and beard flying, an Old Testament prophet in Maine lobster boots.
Jack scoots off in a zig zag.
The pacing for the coursing is all in Steve’s head. He wants to give the rabbit time to limber up and get in stride. He’s wasted his time and money if the jack is snatched too soon. He endangers the dogs if the rabbit gets too strong a start. Older dogs have more endurance, know what to do; pups are apt to go silly, run too hard too soon. The variables are complex, split‑second.
The dogs in the box plead for release, High C begging. Jonathan is looking in wonder at the rabbit, enthralled by its ears. Georgia is hooked to the watch face, gritty with wind blown hair.
The jack is about 1/3 way down the park. Steve drops the lever. The box pops.
On first seeing greyhounds course a jack, a bystander might feel two things; that it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, those magnificent dogs at full speed; that it’s a forbidden pleasure, an ugly one.
Greyhounds hunt by eye and speed. Experienced greyhounds will immediately sight the jack. Pups often need to be directed by the dog man. They leap from the box in a random push, as quick and mechanized as the starting box gate itself.
In this first trial of the morning, the dogs sight at once, swinging in a pack, their hind legs spraying up dirt in a shower.
A greyhound at blast off‑‑that’s breaking the laws of gravity. Acceleration to 45 mph in two seconds flat.
They go aero‑dynamic, sleeker than any hood ornament. Spirit of Speed. Those heads shoot forward like arrows, hind legs coming full throttle, haunches bulging, long tails tight under their bellies, ears plastered back. An invisible force pulls them upward and on in a frantic, pall mall, heart bursting effort. Seems you’ve never seen any creature try so hard before. Seems they’ll explode like rockets at any moment.
The jack has 30 yards. He’s got 20 yards. The jack turns on a dime, gains. The pack swings left, breaks fast to the right, closes.
The chase swings down the far side of the park, circles to the end, careens back mid‑field. These are the last few seconds before Steve must turn loose the reliefs. He’s standing on his toes, straining to see through the dust.
Georgia’s voice rises in warning, “Steve, Steve . . .”
But bang. In an explosion, the pack cuts in razor sharp and the jack is suddenly lost in a whirlwind of thrashing greyhounds.
The park rings with the agonized screaming of the jack. The cry catches at you. It holds you still and horrified. The cry runs out ragged, in hard braying notes, syncopated to the rending of the rabbit’s body.
Slowly, the merry‑go‑round of dogs de-accelerates, although the four continue pulling on the carcass.
“Run, God damn it!” Steve waves Jonathan on as he charges for the fray.
In the passion of this moment the pack can easily turn on one of its own members. It’s essential for Steve to regain control as soon as possible. He and Jonathan lope forward, leads and muzzles in hand.
The four at last tethered, Steve and Jonathan walk them for a moment, letting them cool down. The dogs are lathered, coats slick with sweat and spittle. Tongues loll to the side, foam flecked. Jack fur, skin, flesh, dangles from their mouths. Their eyes are glazed. They walk stiffly beside the men, like sleep walkers. They are alien beasts.
“They’re too hot to put back in the trailer,” Steve tells Jonathan. “Walk ’em back to the kennel. Leave ’em in the turnout. Make sure they’ve got water. Don’t forget their muzzles!”
This first trial of the morning was a good one. While Steve and Georgia wait for Jonathan to return, they bend heads at the fence reviewing the details‑‑the trial time, who seemed to get the rabbit, how all four gave speed and interest, not one of them checking or backing off. Yes, it went well.
When the last of the kennel dogs are coursed the run pups are up. With them the coursing is another story.
Just loading the pups into the trailer is exhausting. They think they’re going to the slaughter, drop limp and as absurd as Raggedy Ann. At 11 months, a greyhound can already weigh more than 70 pounds‑‑stuffing that weight into a trailer hold is not easy.
The short ride to the park over with‑‑and the pups howl all the way‑‑they scramble to get out. Open a trailer door and five wet noses are battling you to be free of that strange, gloomy, closed‑in place.
You have to drag them into the park. The bitches are so scared they’re trying to squat and pee. The brawny young males stubbornly dig their hindquarters in, telling you with all their might that they don’t want to go.
But suddenly they see the open ground inside the park. They catch the rabbit smell, the lingering stink of blood. Then their eyes flash like light bulbs. They get the deadly greyhound glint. They’re panting and squirming like devils in heat.
Little is in this first group, the Carrie Nations.
For Little, Steve and Georgia don’t need to say a word. For her this comes round to lady fortune. Georgia has on her Oklahoma‑bar look. Steve is all business‑as‑usual, only gruffer. Jonathan stares oblivious.
Pups are hand schooled. The starting box would scare them witless. To hold a greyhound steady while a jack scampers down a coursing park is a man’s exercise in stamina.
Steve’s taken the two dogs and the largest bitch, leaving Jonathan to cope with the two smaller bitches and Little. Hand schooling means gathering the pups between your legs, half crouching, quarterback style, behind them. Flip one arm in a wrestling hold around the three slim loins. Brace the chests up front with a wrap‑around hug. Lift the hindquarters a couple of inches off the ground. This is the only way to hold three eels still, knee deep in a storming ocean.
The pups have lost their minds. They’re trying to turn somersaults. Steve doesn’t have a chance to even glance over at Little, to check how she’s reacting.
With pups you can’t give the rabbit too much head start. 100 feet into the park and Steve shouts “Go!”
The pups are off in a floundering, clumsy rout, falling over each other, blinded by their commotion. They know there’s something out there for them, some tantalizing goodie their desperate to sight and chase. They haven’t learned to focus yet. They’re looking in all the wrong directions.
Steve makes a dash ahead of them. “Hey hey hey pups, over here!” He waves his arms, a windmill in the wake of the fast departing Jack.
With a yelp of recognition, one dog catches sight of it, bears off at top speed.
“Oh my God,” shouts Georgia. “It’s Little!”
Steve doesn’t stop to look. He’s already hobbling back to the truck to fetch the relief. Without a second’s pause he turns Ellie loose.
She’s 100% professional at this. Already, she’s a gray streak hurtling down the field, going straight for the action. That’s Grade‑A, top form racing she’s showing.
Even before Ellie can close in, the jack turns back, a suicide into the pups.
Georgia is breathless, as if she too had been running. “Oh my God. I think Little nailed it,” she gasps. “I think it was her.”
Steve is charging off, leads in hand. “Hey pups, hey pup‑pup‑pup . . .” His dog‑man yodel, his dog‑man run.
The jack’s wail rises. In counter point to the jack, a greyhound is yelping, another kind of terrified scream.
“Oh shit!” shouts Georgia. “Run for it . . . they’re nailing a pup!”
Ellie, Little, the pups from the litter, the jack‑‑the drama is hidden in a mystery of dust cloud. Steve disappears into it as well.
A second goes. Steve’s cursing roars up over the screeching. Another second and the greyhound crying has stopped.
Emerging from the cloud, Steve runs forward with a greyhound in his arms, carrying it like a lamb.
“Don’t worry about Ellie, she’s got the rabbit,” he shouts back to Jonathan. “Get that big red dog. He’s the trouble maker.”
“It’s the big bitch,” he calls back to Georgia. “He took about a dollar’s worth out of her.”
Steve leaves the whimpering bitch in Georgia’s care‑‑she’s already got the ointment and gauze out of the truck. He looks up and down the coursing park. All accounted for except Little.
Jonathan stands apart from it all face expressing his perplexity. Torn between reverence and revulsion.
“Look Steve. Turn around.” Georgia’s voice has suddenly turned to butter. A tear sparkles on this tough woman’s cheek.
Little comes sashaying in looking even smaller than she is against the empty expanse. She’s coming straight for Steve, who is waiting for her.
Little struts along with a jack ear between her teeth.
She stops at his feet. She drops the jack ear there, between his boots. Little does that and then stands panting, grinning.
Even dog men melt. In a rough jerk the big man bends down to embrace the small brindle bitch.
She has rabbit on the breath.