Memories:

The story about the dog reminds me of a little beagle dog I had once. He just showed up at my house, an older dog but still very active, he seemed healthy except that one ear had a missing piece that was shaped like another dog may have taken a bite out of it. We named him Stray Beagle.
He loved to hunt rabbits. I don’t hunt. He was a nice little house dog and liked the kids and all, but he got no hunting in my house. My father took him up to the Adirondacks to hunt snowshoe rabbits several times, and praised the dog’s abilities. Once the dog ran the rabbit far away from where my father was, and it got dark so he couldn’t be tracked through the woods. My father left a blanket along the road and went back late that night, and there was Stray, curled up waiting.
One day a neighbor who lived about a mile down the road but only a short distance ‘crosslots’ came to my door. “Can your little dog come out ’n’ go hunting?” he asked. The man did a lot of rabbit hunting, and walked from his house up into our old pasture land. Seems Stray had been out one day and they met up, and Stray ran him some rabbits. The man hunted them, and took them to New York City to sell. They met many times for a nice day hunting when George decided to make sure this was all right – I can’t recall his last name, nor do I know how he figured out where the dog lived, he may have checked some of the other neighbors and just narrowed it down. From then on, he would come park in our yard, and Stray would run out to meet him and off they would go.
On one of his trips back from New York, George was killed in an accident. For weeks, Stray sat on the porch, looking down the driveway and up into the fields. Sometimes he would trot up into the fields, be gone a while and then come back and keep looking for George to come along and take him hunting.
A while later, the dog disappeared. I’d like to think that he found someone who was rabbit hunting and just went on home with them.