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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!

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.

Many of us know someone who has lost a horse to theft. And whenever it happens we can’t help imagining how we would feel if it happened to one of our own. It’s a sickening prospect, and it strongly suggests we take precautions not only to prevent such an experience but to increase the likelihood of a happy outcome should it occur.

In the event a horse disappears, here’s what every owner should have on hand: bill of sale or cancelled check; registration papers with brands, marks, and scar locations; a veterinary certificate with recent Coggins test and vaccinations; and four good photos (front, rear, and both sides) showing brands, marks, and scars. These photos should be updated periodically.

Karen L. Myers photo

Over the past couple of months we have run a few News items about the Triple Crown season, kicked off just last Saturday by the Kentucky Derby. We wrote about Uncle Mo, who many in the Thoroughbred industry hoped would be a legitimate Triple Crown contender and breathe new life into the industry. We wrote about Rosie Napravnik who with nearly one thousand wins to her credit hoped to be the first woman to win the Kentucky Derby. True, this isn’t foxhunting, and the question arises whether or not I should be publishing these stories in Foxhunting Life. Why do I?

My answer is because that’s where our great horses come from. The Thoroughbred is the elite athlete of the equine world, and many of our field hunters are off-the-track Thoroughbreds, Thoroughbred crosses, or have Thoroughbred bloodlines in their foundation stock.

If when you take to the field you care at all about grace, generosity, and/or athleticism, you have to thank those bloodlines and those beautiful dreamers—the breeders, trainers, owners, and jocks—who commit their lives, their fortunes, and all their energies to the mostly unforgiving quest of producing a better racehorse. And except for one happy outcome last Saturday, weren’t the hopes of many of those beautiful dreamers cruelly dashed?

Do you know what “Forester’s Corn” is? (I’d be exceedingly impressed if you did!)

In the Lake District of northern England, during the eighteenth century, a custom by that name was practiced in which the bailiff kept dogs for the hunting and destroying of foxes and other vermin. The bailiff in the neighborhood of Patterdale received forty quarts of oats from every tenant for providing this service.

This little bit of hunting history was but one small gem gleaned from a story in a wonderful website we just discovered—Lakeland Hunting Memories—which I particularly commend to you. Whenever we find a worthy site we add it to our “Links We Like” directory (see left-hand column on the Home Page). This site, all about hunting in the Lake District of northern England, is beautifully written and sensitively presented by Ron Black in Cumbria, UK.

In a recent blog I discussed our intention to expand coverage across the foxhunting world by establishing a network of regional correspondents. We want to publish more news about people and hunts—new Masters, changes in hunt staff, marriages, births, deaths, illnesses—indeed any news that others in our fraternity of foxhunters would want to know.

We want news not only about Masters and staff, but about foxhunters’ accomplishments and milestones as well. Did a foxhunter’s horse win the Kentucky Derby or the Grand National? Was a foxhunter named Horseman of the Year? Win a Pulitzer Prize? Write a best-selling book?

So far, six regional correspondents are in place: Ian Anderson, ex-MFH of the Ashford Valley Hounds (UK); Denya Massey Clarke (ON); Noel Mullins, County Dublin, Ireland; C. Thompson Pardoe, MFH of the Goshen Hunt (MD); Becky Thayer (SC); and Martha Woodham (GA). We’re thrilled to have each of these talented individuals feeding current news from their regions to readers around the foxhunting world through Foxhunting Life.

If you liked Rupert Isaacson’s recent New York Times Best-Seller, The Horse Boy: A Father’s Quest to Heal His Son, you will undoubtedly like his book, The Wild Host: The History and Meaning of the Hunt.

Co-published by The Derrydale Press, Wild Host is a beautifully illustrated history of hunting; a meditation on the meaning of hunting spiritually and culturally; and a very personal hunting account. Destined from the outset to be controversial, Isaacson justifies and celebrates hunting while acknowledging the realities of a modern world of heightened compassion and sensitivities. Wild Host is available here in the Bookstore.

Karen Myers photoI can’t help but notice that this week’s topics constitute a comprehensive and balanced offering. Music, food, art, and foxhunting. What more could any sportsman want from life? Okay, okay, but let's just leave it this way!

Music:

Listen, then download another of Edwin Hall’s country foxhunting songs. Learn the chorus, and you won’t be able to resist singing along!

Food:

Check out the winners in this year’s hunt breakfast recipe contest. As our judge Juliet Mackay-Smith says, there are so many fine recipes in so many categories that selecting the winners presented her with very hard choices.

Art:

Linda Volrath describes art as a visual language in which the artist attempts to capture a fleeting image along with the mood of the moment and communicate it to the viewer in a permanent way. Foxhunting Life is proud to feature both her oil paintings and the philosophy behind her endeavors.

Current news from around the hunting world is something Foxhunting Life readers appreciate, and we want to ramp up this part of our content by having more eyes and ears in place. Would you like to be a Regional Correspondent for FHL? Don’t say yes unless you know you’ll have a lot of fun doing it!

If you have your finger on the pulse of events among the hunts in your territory, we’d like to hear from you. We’re not asking you to write the news reports (although we’d be pleased if you would like to do that). Just give us the facts by phone or e-mail, and we’ll write the story.

Regional correspondents will earn a free subscription to Foxhunting Life for their efforts, along with the occasional gift of a book, CD, or DVD from our Bookstore. They will be listed on the site as the go-to person for news in their region and will have their byline on the story, if published.

Foxcliffe Hickory Wind greets her admirers with regal dignity.Two news items recently posted on the Home Page touch me somewhat personally—one joyous, one sad: the Scottish deerhound that won Best of Show at Westminster and the destruction by fire of William Frazer’s custom tailor shop in Ireland. What follows in this blog are just sidebars to the stories below. Scroll down to see them.

Foxcliffe Hickory Wind

As every dog person knows, Best of Show at Westminster is huge. Even so, foxhunting veterinarian Scott Dove was completely unprepared for the widespread exuberance, the congratulations, and the excitement of friends and strangers over his Scottish deerhound being anointed with that honor.

Scott is a long-time foxhunter and honorary whipper-in to the Old Dominion Hounds. My wife has been a client of his for her field trial Labrador retrievers. I wanted to meet Hickory and my first opportunity was a party at a local restaurant/pub in Flint Hill, Virginia.