Just a couple cow pictures for fun.

Yesterday I went with eleven kids and young leaders from our youth group to help clean up some downed trees on a members property around a pond they have. We worked about four hours and accomplished quite a bit. We had one huge pile of brush and logs and several small ones that they'll burn later. Another guy and I ran chain saws most of the day. I've got 24 years on him and was beginning to feel it after 4 hrs but it worked out fine. The kids worked pretty good for young people. The people that own the property brought pizza , pop and dessert at 12:15 which was devoured in about 20 minutes. We were all ready to eat. After that we headed home to the church for kids to be picked up at 1:30. We got a lot done , nobody got hurt and think they all enjoyed being outside even though it was a little cool.

Saturday night, a friend from work and I went on a competition coonhunt done at Rockville. There were 27 pickups with dogboxes in the beds when I got there. Some were pretty serious at the sport but I think most, including me were just out for fun. I'd never competition hunted before and learned a few things about it. There is a rather complicated scoring system which seems silly but you have to have rules for any competition. Basicly, the dog that tracks and trees the coon most accurately and quickly wins the round. They divide all the dogs up in a blind draw in groups of 3 or 4 , I was in a cast of 3. My dog treed the first coon and was ahead at that point. He also treed the second coon but when the guys and other dogs came in to look for the coon he left he tree. I don't think he liked all the company. Anyway, when he left the tree a penalty was charged and he lost points. Not much happened after that accept for catching the dogs. This can be a challenge in itself but we got them without too much trouble. I thought that we had won the cast but actually nobody did. My dog lost his positive points and none of the other dogs scored enough to win. We had a good time anyway and met several people. Thirty or so coonhunters in full gear is quite a sight, frightening to weak hearted. I inhaled enough smoke in the clubhouse to have had 10 cigarettes. They did have a nice setup though with a kitchen that served mostly hamburgers and coffee. My dog actually did quite well even though the scoring didn't show it. I'll probably take him again.

See ya later,

Dad