Who Is This?
Liz Callar photo
We featured this photo in our most recent “Who Is This?” contest on FaceBook. We dropped the hint that our mystery horseman is a familiar figure in the hunting field and in the horse show world as well. Can you identify him?
Nick Greenwell from Bluemont, Virginia was the first with the correct answer, and he’ll receive a prize from Foxhunting Life. Apparently it was an easy puzzle. There was an immediate flood of correct answers—a testament to the popularity of….
Walking Motive and Monarch
Foxhunting Life is pleased to bring you these wonderfully entertaining extracts from a new hound blog I know you will enjoy. Martha Wolfe and her family have walked puppies for the Blue Ridge Hunt (VA) every summer for the past ten years. Martha updates her blog regularly with Motive’s and Monarch’s latest adventures so that we, too, may enjoy watching them grow and learn.
Monarch with rope“Incredibly destructive,” I muttered yesterday evening as my husband, Bill, and I were eating dinner on our screen porch, watching these two terrorists drag the cover to our outdoor grill across the patio. Because they are hound dogs, nothing is off limits. Their little noses find the smallest scent and their first reaction is to either chew it or dig for it. A crumb or a caterpillar, a two-day old footprint from a passing varmint, or a newly plopped horse turd sends them into olfactory ecstasy. I’ve tried to imagine being able to smell everything a hound dog can smell…what a new world that would be.
I look forward to the puppies every summer. They make me smile, and what better way to spend a day?
Motive and Monarch at Walk
Foxhound puppies sent out of the kennels to live at hunt members’ and supporters’ farms for socializing are said to be “at walk.” It’s sort of like summer camp for the pups, and it happens every spring and summer. When destruction to yard, garden, and shrubs exceeds the limits of the puppy walkers’ tolerance, the hounds are returned to the kennels. By that time, the puppies will have grown and prospered, learned their names, been introduced to the lead, and more or less socialized. A break for the huntsman, an education for the puppies, and an annual delight for the puppy walkers.
The author and her family have walked puppies for the Blue Ridge Hunt (VA) every summer for nearly twenty years. This blog was first published in Foxhunting Life nearly ten years ago and this being the time of year when hound puppies are out at walk, we thought it would be fun to bring it back.
Monarch with rope“Incredibly destructive,” I muttered yesterday evening as my husband, Bill, and I were eating dinner on our screen porch, watching these two terrorists drag the cover to our outdoor grill across the patio. Because they are hound dogs, nothing is off limits. Their little noses find the smallest scent and their first reaction is to either chew it or dig for it. A crumb or a caterpillar, a two-day old footprint from a passing varmint, or a newly plopped horse turd sends them into olfactory ecstasy. I’ve tried to imagine being able to smell everything a hound dog can smell…what a new world that would be.
I look forward to the puppies every summer. They make me smile, and what better way to spend a day?
Where Do the Old Articles Go?
Karen L. Meyers photoReaders will notice, we hope, that FHL’s Home Page is continually being updated with new articles. As new articles are posted, the older material is pushed lower on the Home Page until it disappears. Or does it? No, it doesn’t! Not completely, anyway.
There are four ways to find an old article: the Search function, the Full Article List, the Hunt Club Pages, or by Category.
Dylan Thomas’s Paean to Summer
Dylan Thomas (1914 — 1953)“Fern Hill” is one of Dylan Thomas’s most highly regarded poems. The poem is a paean to a green, lush summer and will resonate with anyone who can recall the summers of their youth: the smell of sweet mown hay, the whir of busy insects, the languor of long, sunny days. I’ve reproduced just the second stanza here, because it fits Foxhunting Life’s profile!
Foxhunter Crushed in Automobile by Fallen Tree
Albert Carl Roeth III, a longtime member of the Fairfax Hunt (VA), was killed Tuesday, July 17, in Great Falls, Virginia, when a massive oak tree by the side of the road fell on his car. The tree is estimated to be two hundred years old and to weigh forty tons. Arborists that have examined […]
Aiken Huntsman Weds; Goes to Sea
Katherine Gunter and John Dunbar were married on June 9, 2012, at Tybee Island, Georgia. Katherine has been huntsman for the Aiken Hounds (SC) for the past four seasons. Prior to Aiken, she was professional staff at the Whiskey Road Foxhounds (SC) and the Bear Creek Hounds (GA). John laid the drag for Aiken Hounds […]
Puppy Show Exclusive!
With privacy now a quaint relic of the recent past, we paparazzi can tune into intimate conversation wherever we wish. Recently our hidden camera and super-sensitive parabolic microphone caught Toronto and North York huntsman Antony Gaylard and his favorite hound Barter in an unguarded moment. Couldn’t you have given the judge just one little smile? […]
War Horse
Lt. Eric Pedersen and RecklessMany of us recall the rave reviews that followed the London opening of the blockbuster play—now a movie—War Horse. As everyone drawing breath knows, the fictional story is about a boy who loses his horse—with which he has an uncommon bond—to the battlefields of World War I.
A friend, Herb Jonkers, just pointed me to the story of a real life war horse named Reckless, who was separated from her youthful owner during the Korean War and became one of the Marine Corps’ greatest heroes. In 1997, when Life Magazine published a special Collectors Edition titled “Celebrating Our Heroes,” the story of Reckless was included alongside the stories of other heroes such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, and Mother Teresa.
Letters to a Young Huntsman
Letters to a Young Huntsman, Andrew Barclay, Outskirts Press, Inc., Denver, 2012, 116 pages, $27.95I have long admired Andrew Barclay’s writing. As for his expertise, that was proven long ago in the hunting field.
Andrew got a good start to his career by whipping-in to legendary huntsman Les Grimes for seven years at the Green Spring Valley Hounds in Maryland. Upon Grimes’s retirement, the horn was passed to Andrew, and he carried it with distinction there for the next twenty years.
Around the time that Andrew was getting ready to retire as huntsman, MFHA Director Tony Leahy was formulating what is now known as the MFHA’s Professional Development Program—a structured training program for young aspiring huntsmen. One aspect of the program required that a knowledgeable mentor be available to work with each individual admitted into the program.