By Julie Reardon
As the saying goes, only mad dogs and Englishmen venture out in the hot midday sun of the dog days. This tale from a few years ago should more properly titled rabid wildlife, crazy dogs and Virginia girls.
One sunny summer morning during the dog days, my three resident Chesapeake Bay retrievers chased and killed a rabid fox. The drama unfolded behind my back as I was outside finishing some gardening chores before it got too hot and oblivious to the drama unfolding.
However, from the upstairs bathroom window my husband Doug saw it unfold in the big pasture. He noticed what he thought was a small dog chasing our youngest retriever Der, then about 18 months. He thought that was strange as we almost never have strange dogs venture on our farm. As he watched, he could almost imagine Der thinking, “What’s wrong with this picture?” as she turned on the afterburners, circled around and began chasing the smaller animal. They ran toward the house with Der in hot pursuit, passing barely 20 feet behind me, but silently. Shortly after, Der came over to where I was gardening and flopped down by the older two retrievers, older females aged 8 and 9, and Doug came outside to ask me if I’d seen it.
“Seen what?” I asked. He relayed that he’d watched Der chase a small animal under the little deck, and that they’d passed right behind me. Two humans and the three dogs walked over to the little back deck, only about 2 feet off the ground. “Sic-sic-sic, git ‘em girls!” we egged the dogs on when they showed no interest and they looked at us like we were crazy. Their actions told us plainly they thought it was too hot for such madness. Doug went back inside, and I went back to the garden bed to finish up.
Five minutes later, I heard a feral-sounding roar that I knew did not come from my dogs and turned around to see them attacking what I immediately recognized as a fox next to the little deck. It was over by the time I got there. One of them must’ve shaken it and snapped its neck, for there was no blood or teeth marks on it.
Even though all 3 were well trained hunting retrievers, they’re always sent individually, not 3 per retrieve. Der proudly delivered the fox to me as if it was the Christmas goose. I was more worried the dogs might start brawling over this prize, so I took the fox, laid it on top of the nearby board fence, and took the excited dogs inside. And yes, I did suspect rabies—we have foxes here but they are regularly hunted by the local hound pack, they are mainly nocturnal animals and they would never attack 75-lb. dogs unless cornered. Or rabid. Rabies is spread by saliva, and there was plenty of that. Even if I hadn’t handled that carcass, there was no way to avoid the slobber of three overly excited dogs. Worse, I had open poison ivy sores on both hands.
The next day I could find no one in the county that was any help, but the huntsman at the local fox hunting kennels, a mile from me, told me there had been more than several instances of rabid wildlife locally and to take the carcass to the nearby state agricultural lab to get it tested. The head guy I needed to speak to was out of the office investigating another rabies report. Not thinking of myself, I wasn’t too worried about the dogs as all had current rabies vaccinations. But I needed to get the preventative shots for myself. The county followed up with a visit from animal control where copies of the dogs’ rabies shots were not enough—they all needed boosters. And they were quarantined to the farm for 45 days, thus missing almost the entire fall field trial season.
Adding insult to expensive injury, I got busted for unpaid county dog taxes, that they euphemistically call dog licenses. These, on principal, I do not pay because of how much I do pay in property taxes for my land. The dogs’ boosters, dog tax fines for three intact animals and my own shots were on the order of $15,000 with $13,000 of that for my own shots. You don’t really have a choice to wait and see if you have symptoms, since rabies is 99.5% fatal. I can’t even imagine what it would cost today—this was 13 years ago. Suffice it to say this was an expensive fox hunt.