Get Along Little Doggy

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Sometimes when your band is on tour for an extended period of time, the stress of the road starts wearing down on you and ends up in words not meaning to be said, resulting in feelings being hurt, and facial structures being altered. The West Texas Millionaires had been on the US tour for a year and eight months in 1989, had broken into the top 50 country charts, and the boys were each worth over 400 grand. Despite all this, they needed to let off some steam and relax, and Dan knew the exact refuge to escape too.

They were near Abilene Texas, where a relative of his named Earl Simonis had an interesting ranch which got out of the cattle business, due to the drop in beef prices, for a new product: herding foxhounds. Yep, it's a lucrative business, raising them from pups, running them across the range to learn the scents of the land, then sell them to customers mainly in Manassas Virginia to hunt.

Earl Simonis is a well known fox hound handling expert, who for many years has practiced and taught low stress methods for moving fox hounds on Texas Praries. The Earl Simonis methods of calm, slow movement of fox hounds on pastures can be defined as a stimulus-response relationship.

The day starts early, Dan and the boys finished up breakfast and saddled up, yelling and whistling to get the dogs started. They cover the east quarter of the 500 acre ranch till the dogs reach the first water tank for a brief break. Then its off to the north quarter, which can cause the dogs to stray and therein a cowboy has to round up those that got off the trail.

Lunch time, and Dan is wiping the sweat off his forehead, tired, dusty, and needing to refill his canteen to get the raw throat tender again. A bite of beef jerky and their off again. They are behind schedule, so the boys are going to have to push the fox hounds hard to make it to the west end of the ranch to bed down for the night. Whoopin and a hollerin they finally make it to the water tank and just in time too, the herd has spent their energy, and the boys dont want to lose too much weight off of the herd.

After the pack has been feed and watered, the boys then get their vittles cooking: fat back with pinto beans with salt water cornbread. As the sun starts to go down, Dan gets out his guitar, begins to sing his favorite trail song, and as he gets into the high range of the chorus, the whole herd of Fox hounds join in, howling in unison into the late hours of the night's full moon. It does'nt get any better than this.