When God created the cowboy she did so with a sense of humor that only a cowboy could appreciate, by giving dogs a sense of smell 30,000 times more powerful than a human. The result of this is that when you ride out horseback with your cow hounds in tow, the first rabbit trail you encounter will relieve you of your canine helpers as they zigzag out through the brush yelping to one another, “I got it! “Or “no, over here! “Or “there he goes!” Well, you whistle to them, and if you’re lucky, or have control collars on them, they come back and you progress toward the cow herd. Now, a little farther on you spy a deer, off to your right. As she ducks off into the Yaupon brush, dear doggy catches a whiff of her trail. Of course at first the deer’s scent is not directional, so that browser goes screaming off to your left in pursuit of the smell, only to discover at about 100 yards that the trail is cooling. So what does he do? He reverses and comes full speed back toward the trail of the deer, spooking your green quarter horse as he zips by at warp speed! The really twisted part of this joke is that God created deer to run just a weenie bit faster than cow dogs. So they can never catch them. Not that they’d know what to do with them if they did. Our cowboy is now spending half an hour whistling and trumpeting for hounds that are half a mile away. Having finally reacquired your pack you now have only minor inconveniences such as armadillos, turtles or squirrels to distract the canine mind. If you’re lucky your hounds may have enough energy left to actually help pen cows!