Foxhunt
FHL takes pleasure in publishing the winning entry in the United States Pony Club annual Hildegard Neill Ritchie Joys of Foxhunting Writing Contest for 2010. As one of the contest judges, I was impressed by the powerful imagery produced by this young author’s creative description of wind, trees, and earth from the horse’s perspective.
In the coming weeks FHL will publish more worthy top-placing efforts by foxhunting Pony Clubbers in the contest.
Ring in the Season!
Want your cell phone to ring like this (click the horn)? Foxhunting Life invites you to ring in the new hunting season with free hunting horn ring-tones! Select and download the calls of your choice for your cell phone, courtesy of two-time National Horn Blowing Champion John Tabachka, huntsman for the Deep Run Hunt (VA). […]
The Road Warriors: Day Twelve
Photojournalist Betsy Parker, her friend Beth Rera, and Beth’s seven-year-old son John embarked some days ago on a cross-country horse-hauling odyssey—Virginia to California—to include a West Coast summer vacation tour. Since Betsy can be counted on for compelling copy and excellent photography, FHL decided to go along for the ride. Betsy’s earlier reports may be found under the Horse and Hound drop-down menu/Travel.
Beth was the one who first noticed.
Since Utah on the way out, we’ve been in high desert sierra or rocky mountain morraine. It is beautiful out west, but verdant and lush it isn’t.
Yesterday we stopped over at a horse hotel just west of Albuquerque, New Mexico. We’ve grown accustomed to the western horse-keeping style: outdoor covered stall attached to a twelve-by-twelve-square-foot paddock. And that’s all. No communal pastures, not a blade of grass, no group turnout. It’s not wrong or bad, just different.
National Sporting Library Presents Symposium on Hunting Dogs
The National Sporting Library & Museum in Middleburg, Virginia, will host a full-day symposium “Lives of Dogs: Origins & Evolution of Hunting & Sporting Breeds” from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, October 23, 2010. An international panel of six speakers, moderated by Timothy J. Greenan, M.D., will trace the history of hunting with dogs from prehistory through the present day. The symposium, made possible by the gift of an anonymous donor, is part of the Library’s Public Lecture Series, and coincides with the exhibition “Lives of Dogs, Viewed through Literature, Art, & Ephemera” on view through December 11, 2010.
The Road Warriors: Day Eleven
Photojournalist Betsy Parker, her friend Beth Rera, and Beth’s seven-year-old son John embarked some days ago on a cross-country horse-hauling odyssey—Virginia to California—to include a West Coast summer vacation tour. Since summer vacation appealed to us as well, and since Betsy can be counted on for compelling copy, FHL decided to go along for the virtual ride. Betsy’s earlier reports may be found under the Horse and Hound drop-down menu/Travel
I anticipated that today’s adventure at Universal Studios in Hollywood would be so…o…o different, and far less real than last week’s adventure in breathtaking Yosemite National Park. After all, how antipodean….
Yosemite: Natural splendor—one million-plus acres of untrammeled grandeur, the very definition of real.
Universal: Unnaturally gaudy—less than 100 acres, a crush of humanity, miles of pavement, cartoonish reality at the heart of a Hollywood facade.
Still, after you take a good, hard look, you end up with—surprisingly—plenty of the same thing. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
The Road Warriors: Days Eight, Nine and Ten
Photojournalist Betsy Parker, her friend Beth Rera, and Beth’s seven-year-old son John embarked some days ago on a cross-country horse-hauling odyssey—Virginia to California—to include a West Coast summer vacation tour. Since Betsy can be counted on for compelling copy and excellent photography, FHL went along for the ride. Betsy’s earlier reports may be found under the Horse and Hound drop-down menu/Travel.
I will compress the last three-and-a-half days of epic tourism into tidy note form. Any of these subjects is deserving of its own report, if not chapter, and in some cases a volume, but I’ll keep to the strictest of pyramid-style reporting.
Left Merced hotel midmorning Tuesday to get to Crane Flat in Yosemite—the only walk-in campground within the Yosemite National Park with any chance of getting a site without twelve-month advance reservations. Pretty drive in, through California farmland. We left the valley about forty miles out from the park and began rising steadily, through changing elevation/topography/flora and, I’m sure, fauna. It got downright breathtaking, with valley views and granite outcroppings after we entered the park proper (Yosemite National Park is surrounded by a million acres of National Forest.)
The Road Warriors: Day Seven
They told me it was worth it. To go to the hassle of dropping my trailer in L.A. To go to the trouble of wiggling east, then back west to find Highway 1. To suck up a whole tank of fuel just for a hundred miles of roadway.
And they were right.
The legendary Pacific Coast Highway earned top marks from our intrepid traveling band for beauty, raw power, force of nature, and inspiration, and not necessarily in that order. I read somewhere that lots of people fly into San Francisco, rent a convertible, and drive the route north to south (the preferred direction). I agree. This was fun enough in a diesel truck, but how much more so in, oh, say, a ’97 Esprit Turbo. Highway 1 is built for sin.
Harry Worcester-Smith and the Westmeath Foxhounds
The Westmeath Foxhounds based in the midlands of Ireland was founded in 1854 and is one of the most popular
foxhunting packs in Ireland. They have had a distinguished succession of Joint-Masters over the years, but one of the most flamboyant arrived at the Irish kennels from the USA in 1912 with a retinue that caused quite a stir in the neighbourhood.
The new Master’s entourage included sixteen Thoroughbred horses, a pack of American hounds, five African-American grooms, a yellow open-top sports car, a yellow sulky, and three fighting cocks. His name was Harry Worcester-Smith, MFH of the Grafton Hounds in Massachusetts. He was even better known for the 1905 Great Foxhound Match in the Piedmont Valley with Mr. Alexander Henry Higginson’s English hounds, mainly of Fernie origin.
Farmington Hunt Puppy Show 2010
The annual Farmington Hunt Puppy Show was held at noon on Sunday, the first of many hot days of summer 2010, June 20th at the kennels. Pimm’s Cup and other cool refreshments were served ringside by Forbes and Sherry Reback, and a post-show luncheon was served at the clubhouse by former club president B.J. Korol, with help from Kay Barquin, Shelly Thompson, and secretary and social co-chair Pattie Boden.
The hunt staff, Daron and Alison Beeney and kennelman Tom McCauley made sure the grounds were in beautiful shape for the event that welcomed a good crowd of members, visitors from out of town, and the Free Union neighborhood. Guest judges were Mrs. Phelps S. Hunter, ex-MFH of Los Altos Hounds (CA), and Martyn Blackmore, huntsman for the Loudoun West Hunt.
The Road Warriors: Day Six
Gave Greg a lesson on Kit this morning. She was up because we shipped her a few miles to the Santa Ynez Equestrian Center, a club-based training farm where the Steele’s have a membership. But Greg rode well and took my instruction to soften his back (think your seat when breaking a young horse or riding a tough one), forget his lower legs (think about riding a forward-moving Thoroughbred, which Kit is), and to become acquainted with his outside hand (think of a firm handshake.) She went from tense and quick to soft and supple. I assured Greg that he can ride this mare, and she can be everything he wants in the hunt field and more, but he’s got to ride her sympathetically.