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In the Spring, a Young Dog's Fancy Lightly Turns to Thoughts of ... Squirrels

Tennyson got it wrong, at least for me. Although, like Yortuk and Georg Festrunk, I do like my foxes.

I've been around human males long enough now to know that they fall into a few, limited categories.

They talk about being "leg men" or "breast men" or focus on other assets.

I'm a coon hound.

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Literally. I'm pretty sure I'm part labrador, but my instincts run to the red tick coon hound side of the family. That means, basically, that if there's a squirrel or a rabbit or a fox or a raccoon in the area, well, there's nothing I can do to help myself from going completely ape.

Sorry about the mixed metaphor, there.

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So, I decided on Friday that I'd take my trusty (but tragically inept) sidekick Rick with me so that I could do a story on spring and he could take a few photos and maybe a video or two. And we found some nice stuff on our walk from our house to the Fox River and back. (See the photo gallery , and please add your spring photos and videos, as well.)

But there were two problems with the story. Three actually.

The first is that we didn't get it done on  time. The second is that it turned out to be 83 degrees on Sunday, meaning we skipped spring entirely and shot straight to summer.

And third, every time Rick tried to shoot a photo or video, I'd get a whiff of an animal, and off I'd go. My thought process goes something like this: "Oh, there's a nice potential shot of some daffodils and maybe we could take advantage of the ambient lighting and OHMYGOSHTHAT'SASQUIRRELI'VEGOTTOGETIT! RUFF! RUFF RUFF! RUFF RUFF RUFF!"

Something like that.

Thankfully, young human males don't have that kind of problem when spring is in the air.

Right, Yortuk and Georg?

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