p.1-137
YES! I just finished my SSR assignment for the semester of reading 750 pages. With these pages that I just read, I have 779 pages in the bank. So, we start the story with Billy, a man who is now aged and coming home from work. He sees some dogs attacking another dog, a redbone hound. Billy steps in and saves the outmanned dog. This brings us to a flashback when Billy was a kid. Billy is a young lad who lives on a farm. He wants two coonhounds to hunt and hang out with. One day, he finds a flier in an old camp where it mentions a place to buy pups for $25. He takes it upon himself to save $50 so that he can go buy two. Once he saves the money, he gives it to his grandfather so that he can order them. Billy decides that he can no longer wait for the dogs so he goes to the town and picks them up. On his way home, he buys clothes for his parents. He thinks that they will be mad when he gets back because he left unexpectedly and came back with dogs. On his way back, in the old camp where he found the flier, he notices two names carved into a tree, Dan and Ann. He decides to name the dogs these names. The male was named Old Dan, he was the brave one, and the female, the smart one, was named Little Ann. Billy wants to turn these pups into coonhounds so he tries to train them. His grandpa tells him that he needs a coon hide so that the pups can develop the scent. So, the grandpa helps Billy make a coon trap in which there is a shiny object at the bottom of a can with nails surrounding it angled down so that once the coon's paw goes in, it cannot come back out. Haha, I have actually tried this before at my friend's house, but we never caught anything. I think it is still out there. Anyways, they trapped a coon and killed it. Once the dogs learned the scent, Billy took them hunting. Dan and Ann treed a coon for the first time. This was a big tree so Billy went home to rest and when he came back in the morning, he was proud; Ann and Dan were taking turns guarding the tree throughout the night. Billy cut the tree and with the winds help, it blew down. The dogs killed the coon and then went home proudly with Billy. With this first hide, Billy's mom makes Billy a coonskin hat. Billy then gets excused from all his chores so he can hunt anytime he wants because the price for coon hides went up. However, the coons are getting smarter and are tricking his dogs. His dogs start getting into a little trouble. One night, Dan got stuck in a muskrat hole. Another night, he tried climbing up a tree and was stuck in a hollow entry. Ann fell through the ice after first snow. He manages to save her by fishing her out with the lantern pole after a quick prayer. That is about all I have. It is a great book. I have read it a couple times. This is my third I believe. But, I don't think I will be reading anymore on this term. I just had to get another 100 pages or something. So, read this book. IT IS GREAT.
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