May 17, 2017
You’re Invited!
Stop by the Foxhunting Life booth at the Virginia Foxhound Show and meet our guest, Mary Kalergis. She’ll be talking about her new book, Foxhunters Speak: An Oral History of American Foxhunting, and signing copies. The book has received high praise from readers.
Also, we’ll be previewing and accepting advance orders for our 2018 Foxhunting Life Calendar. We have a special deal for pre-orders!
Our new calendar is affectionately dedicated to Hugh Robards, just retired from a brilliant fifty-five-year career in hunt service. He appears on the cover (and on a page inside) in his final hunt as a professional huntsman. We are proud to publish Middleburg Photo’s gorgeous composition of Robards and the foxhounds of the Middleburg Hunt (VA) on the grass, framed by the bare trees of early spring, all against a blue sky adrift with fair weather clouds.
Southwest Hound Show Grand Champion Is Born Closely to the Crown
Southwest Grand Champion of Show Brazos Valley Precious 2016, shown by Sandy Dixon, MFH, is a lucky mistake. Standing is judge John Tabachka, professional huntsman for the Sewickley Hunt (PA). / Tara Tibbetts photo
Brazos Valley Precious 2016, an American foxhound, was crowned Grand Champion of the Southwest Hound Show on April 22, 2017. Precious is closely inbred; her sire and dam were littermates, Brazos Valley Mystic 2010 and Molly 2010, respectively. An unusual breeding practice for sure, and about which I was anxious to talk to breeder Sandy Dixon, MFH of the Brazos Valley Hounds (TX).
Both Mystic and Molly were hound show winners in Virginia, and their sire and dam were hound show winners. The four foxhounds comprising the first two generations from Precious account for eight grand championships at MFHA-sanctioned hound shows! And if you go back just one more generation, who appears in Precious’s pedigree (top and bottom, because her paternal and maternal grandparents are the same) but Potomac Jefferson 2005, the MFHA Centennial Grand Champion Foxhound...the king...the Clarke Gable of the North American foxhound world.
