December 21, 2010
Nation’s Top Horse Trainers Gather for Michael Richardson Benefit
Michael Richardson has amazing rapport with horses.
I spent a grand week in Aiken, South Carolina recently and had a chance to hunt with George and Jeannie Thomas, MFHs of the Why Worry Hounds (See Hunt Report below). I stayed with my friend Art Richardson, ex-MFH of the Wayne-Du Page Hunt in Illinois. Art hunts with the Aiken packs and brings his two grand-daughters, Mackenzie and Virginia, to visit and hunt with him as often as possible. Life is good for us.
Well...for most of us. For Art’s son Michael, life could be better. Michael is a horseman and was a foxhunter in his younger years. At the age of twenty, Michael was involved in an automobile accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down. That’s not the current problem, though.
A Gift Subscription to Foxhunting Life
If you’re scratching your head for another gift for your favorite foxhunter, how about a year’s subscription to Foxhunting Life? Your lucky recipient will enjoy total access to the next twelve months of constantly changing articles; news; book reviews; sporting artist profiles; hunt breakfast recipes; access to our Panel of Experts; calls on the horn video; songs of foxhunting; hunt reports from North America, Ireland, and England; photo galleries; bookstore; guides to correct hunt attire, hunting etiquette, glossary of hunting terms; travel directories for lodging, stabling, and hirelings. Why there’s hardly an aspect of foxhunting for which FHL doesn’t provide entertaining or useful information! And we’re always coming up with wacky and fun new ideas, like downloading hunting horn calls for your cell phone ring tones and MP-3 files of your favorite hunting songs. Here’s How 1. If you are a subscriber, you must first logout by going to the “Login/Subscribe” drop-down menu at the upper right.2. Click on the “Click Here to Subscribe” button at the top of the right-hand column.3. Fill in the required information, choosing a username and password. (They will be able to change those easily, once they logon.)4. Near the bottom of that screen there is a box labeled “Explain.” Here you can type, “Gift subscription from (your name)” or any other message you would like us to forward to the recipient.5. Complete the subscription process and you will have presented someone with total access to all the articles, news, and resources on Foxhunting Life as well as our bi-monthly e-letter sent to their email address. Foxhunting Life wishes all our subscribers a very Merry Christmas, and we thank you sincerely for your enthusiasm over our new website as our first year draws to a close.
Read More
Horse Tales and Hunt Talk
Horse Tales and Hunt Talk: The Life and Times of 31 Equestrians in Ireland, America, France and Australia, Noel Mullins, NDM Publications, Ireland, 2006, Hard Cover, 171 pages, 37 Euros, www.noelmullins.com. See special Christmas offer at end of article.
Where else but in the hunting fields of Ireland could you have found such larger-than-life and totally disparate characters as Lady Molly Cusack-Smith, Elsie Morgan, American John Huston, and Thady Ryan? Sadly, those four have passed on, but others---Michael Dempsey, Willie Leahy, and Aidan O’Connell---wear big shoes as well and are very much with us still! Also included in this delightful book of personality profiles are North America’s Nancy Penn-Smith Hannum and a smattering of French and Australian characters whom you should also meet.
Photo-journalist Noel Mullins is a regular contributor to The Irish Field, and his work has also been published in Horse and Hound, Baily’s, Hunting and Country Illustrated in England, and The Chronicle of the Horse and Foxhunting Life in the U.S.
"I started hunting with the Galway Blazers with Michael Dempsey when I was eight years old in 1952 on the milkman’s pony, Teapot, but only after I helped him on his delivery rounds!" recalls Mullins.
