The Virginia Foxhound Show: Hounds and Sunshine!
The sun blazed, but the mature trees gracing Morven Park provided shade, and the multi-colored hospitality tents above the show rings offered cooling drink and refreshment. It was a happy throng that milled back and forth all day, watching hounds and browsing the vendor stands.
In the Foxhunting Life booth, our free drawing for Lizi Ruch’s lovely set of four hound puppy plates was a big hit. By day’s end we had a bowlful of names from which to pick, and the winner is….Barbara McKee from Leesburg!
Amazing, Amusing Day
Matthew Mackay-Smith, DVMJust because we’re between seasons doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy a hunting tale now and again. Matthew Mackay-Smith, DVM is an internationally-known veterinarian, co-founder and former medical editor of Equus magazine, and a member of Foxhunting Life’s Panel of Experts. The following account transpired twenty-five years ago. Your editor was there and can vouch for its veracity! -Ed
On Thanksgiving Saturday, the day of the 1986 Blue Ridge Hunt Ball, hounds started the festivities with some most unusual and unforgettable sport. An eager field of fifty followers, including lots of visitors and a dozen children, met hounds and hacked east into the Annefield meadow along Chapel Run. With adjustments to tack scarcely complete, hounds were sent to whipper-in Bobby Pillion’s immediate view halloa upstream.
Too Connected?
Karin Winegar writes:
I’d like to see someone address the irritating practice of riders using Blackberries, I-phones, etc. during a hunt. The first time I saw it was in Aiken last year, when several young members immediately pulled out their devices after the ride–effectively excluding themselves from the post hunt joie de vivre and conversation. I was sad to see this. Have MFHs addressed it?”
Huntsman Stan Luckhurst
Stan Luckhurst, huntsman for the West Kent Foxhounds from 1967 to 1999, departed this world on April 26, just a few days before his seventy-seventh birthday. Stan served in the British Army as a mounted Lead Gunner with the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery at St Johns Wood in London, where he performed in all […]
Meet Us at the Hound Show!
You’re invited to visit Foxhunting Life at our stand in the vendor area at the Virginia Foxhound Show on Sunday, May 29, for a free chance to win a beautiful set of four hand-painted china plates in a humorous hound puppy motif. These plates will go home with the winner of our drawing through the courtesy of Lizi Ruch—foxhunter, artist, and designer of the popular Artfully Equestrian line of hunt-themed tableware and gifts.
Myopia Godfrey Is Grand Champion Foxhound in New England
Myopia Godfrey 2008 (Toronto & North York Godfrey 2001 ex Myopia Devon 2004) / photo by Curve27 StudioMyopia Godfrey 2008, a lovely moving white, modern English dog hound, was judged Grand Champion Foxhound at the New England Hunts Foxhound Show on Sunday, May 8. Godfrey is full of Exmoor and Heythrop bloodlines going back to the halcyon days of the brilliant English hound breeder Captain Ronnie Wallace, who served as MFH at both hunts.
Equineherpes Virus Breaks Out in the West
An outbreak of Equine Herpes Virus (EHV-1) has been confirmed in eight western states and Canada. Most of the confirmed positive horses recently attended the national cutting horse championships in Ogden, Utah. Health officials have concluded that the EHV-1 outbreak started there. Owners of horses that attended that event have been urged to notify their […]
O’Connor and Codd Battle for Top Rider in Ireland
The suspense continues as to who will win this season’s Irish Point-to-Point Riders Championship. Both Derek O’Connor and Jamie Codd have been alternating at the top of the table all season with O’Connor edging ahead last week with a season tally of 94 winners and Codd slipping slightly at 91. O’Connor is the leading Irish […]
Steeplechase Painting Is Best in Show in National Exhibition
Susan Smolensky, an artist we featured last December, has won Best in Show at the Women Artists of the West 41st National Juried Exhibition in Rockport, Texas. This was not a sporting art exhibition, but Smolensky’s dramatic steeplechase painting evidently captivated the judges.
The First Saturday in May
New Market-Middletown Valley Unity was Champion American Foxhound / Karen Kandra Wenzel photoFor most of the horse world, the first Saturday in May means the Kentucky Derby, but in Maryland and much of the Mid-Atlantic it has come to mean hunt races at the Howard County-Iron Bridge Hunt on Saturday and the Maryland Foxhound Club puppy show on Sunday. This year the dates fell on May 7 and 8.