Steven Price
The Reluctant Foxhunter
Author-editor Steve Price was so smitten with Dickie Power’s Scarteen hunt report in our last issue, that he offers this slice of his own experience at Scarteen. Steve is in the process of writing his equestrian memoir, "The Outside of a Horse," and has allowed us to publish this advanced peek at his work-in-progress in which he recalls a day with the Scarteen while on a 1973 equestrian journalists’ junket to Ireland.
Steve Price (right-center) and Carol Clark (left-center) hunting with the Scarteen in 1973
Carol Clark, then editor of the Practical Horseman, had done her homework. During our Friday-morning drive to the village of Knocklong on the Limerick-Tipperary county line, she told me about our host, Thady Ryan. The Ryans had owned the Scarteen pack, named after their ancestral manor house, since 1798. Thady (né Thaddeus) was the most recent in the chain of Ryan men to serve as Master and huntsman. In addition to breeding, training, and caring for his hounds, and breeding and hunting his horses, Thady was a Dublin Horse show official and chef d'équipe of the Irish Olympic three-day team at the Tokyo and Mexico Olympics.
How I Came to go Foxhunting
Steve Price on his first foxhuntSome time ago in Norm Fine's Blog we asked the question, How to did you come to go foxhunting? Fine told his story and received some good Comments in response. Here’s Steve Price’s story. Use the Comments field to send us yours!
It happened nearly forty years ago. I was half of a two-person equestrian journalist junket to Ireland. Over lunch in his home at Scarteen, Master Thady Ryan invited us to join him the following day. My companion happily agreed, but I demurred. My jumping skills were limited to beginner courses---egg-rolls and twice-arounds---and I had seen the formidable banks and ditches separating the County Limerick fields.
“Aw, I’ll give you my best hunting horse,” Thady assured me, “you’ll be safe as houses.”
In for a penny… I shrugged, and went along.
