Horse & Hound
Willie Leahy: Horseman, Entrepreneur, Field Master
Willie Leahy, while Field Master of the Galway Blazers / Noel Mullins photo
Ireland and the horse world lost one of their best-known horsemen, Willie Leahy. He provided outstanding field hunters for visitors to Galway, served as Field Master of the Galway Blazers, was the first to offer pony trekking tours to Ireland, and developed the Connemara Trail. Willie was an uncle to Tony Leahy, MFH, past president of the Masters of Foxhounds Association of North America.
His home was Aille Cross in Loughrea, County Galway. In the nearly seventy years I have known Willie, he remained true to the Traditional Irish Horse, Connemara Pony, and the countryside where he was most content. He started from modest means on a small family farm with one horse, leaving school early, but his boundless imagination and vision saw Willie develop one of the largest equestrian enterprises in Ireland, with farms in Loughrea and Connemara.
Orange County Couple
Orange County Couple, Linda Volrath, oil on linen, 16 x 20 inches
This painting by Linda Volrath is part of an exhibition now hanging at Long Branch, a historic house and farm venue in Boyce, Virginia. Volrath’s sporting art and her husband Steven Parrish’s polished and light-hearted still life compositions will hang until the end of October.
U.S. Senators Tackle Horse Slaughter…Again
US Capitol / Wikimedia Commons Image
Legislation to permanently ban horse slaughter in the United States has been introduced by a bipartisan group of U.S. senators. The proposed bill would also ban the transportation of horses for slaughter. Congress effectively ended all horse slaughter in the country about ten years ago, but the General Accounting Office (GAO) reported that horse welfare suffered as a result.
The new bill―Save America's Forgotten Equines (SAFE)―is sponsored by U.S. Senators Susan Collins, R-Maine, Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, Robert Menendez, D-New Jersey, and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island. Senator Whitehouse, for one, is certainly knowledgeable about equine issues. His father, Charles, a former ambassador, served as Master of the Orange County Hounds (VA) after retiring from foreign service.
While the bill is crafted to save horses' lives, the real question is will it solve the underlying problem of unwanted horses? Or will those horses’ lives become even more tragic because humane euthanasia is denied? Without funding as a part of this or any such bill, I'm afraid so.
The Gray Fox
Blane Klemek, a wildlife manager with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, describes gray foxes as cat-like and rarely seen. Cat-like in that it is the only canid that can climb trees with ease. Which it does to escape predators or pursue its own prey.
Bridle: My North Star
Rose Tree-Blue Mountain Bridle 2015 sports her winning ribbons for Overall High Scoring Foxhound and for leading the hunt to first place among the competing packs at Millbrook. / Maryann Cully photo
I want to tell you about a foxhound in my pack, the Rose Tree-Blue Mountain Hunt (PA). She has proven herself to me for years and just finished the Millbrook Performance Trial as the overall high-scoring foxhound.
Selecting hounds to take to Millbrook, I was not at all sure I would bring her. Now, in her seventh season and having whelped two litters of puppies, I had reservations.
Millbrook Hunt Hosts Season’s Performance Trial Opener
RoseTree-Blue Mountain prevails with all five entries finishing among the top-ten overall scoring hounds, including Bridle 2015, the winner.
Through an early morning mist, foxhounds are in full cry after the coyote. This excellent video was filmed on the second day of the Millboo Hunt Foxhound Performance Trials. / Video by Marion Latta de Vogel
The first of ten foxhound performance trials scheduled across North America this season is history. Millbrook Hunt (NY) hosted the 2021/2022 opener on September 8 and 9, 2021. Participants enjoyed superb weather, gorgeous country, exciting sport, and Millbrook’s unparalleled hospitality.
The first nine trials are qualifiers for the tenth and final Grand Championship Trials. That final showdown is scheduled for March 26 and 27, 2022, in Hoffman, North Carolina, where a national champion and the top ten foxhounds countrywide will be recognized.
Harry Worcester Smith…the Great Hound Match of 1905…a Discovery?
Photograph discovered by Baily's in a biscuit tin, dated 1905 on the back, and appearing American.
The historic and well-documented Great Hound Match of 1905 was a face-off between A. Henry Higginson’s Middlesex Hunt (MA) with its English Foxhounds and Harry Worcester Smith of the Grafton Hunt (MA) and his American foxhounds. The Match was held in the then hunting country of the Piedmont Fox Hounds (VA), with each pack alternating hunting days.
Despite the substantial coverage by the press and public interest in the Match at the time―and ever since―something has been missing.
Kennel Crisis Demands Quick Action
Camargo huntsman Andy Bozdan and a healthy Fargo.
With permission, here’s a recent FaceBook post by Andy Bozdan, the London-born huntsman at the Camargo Hunt (OH). The post generated excited congratulatory praise from foxhunters all over, and justly so. This is a man with a big heart for animals. Let’s just say, “a big heart...period.”
I contacted Andy, wanting to write about his experience in Foxhunting Life, and Andy agreed by saying, “If it could be helpful, then yes.” After adding that what he did was based on training he’d had for humans, Andy suggested, “I think it would be good to get a knowledgeable vet to give the actual procedural advice.” Right you are, Andy, so here’s both.
Frank Burke: Man and Horseman
The Irish possess a mystical, possibly genetic relationship with the horse. The late Frank Burke is a splendid example of the horseman all horse-lovers aspire to be.
Frank Burke with Siscero, winner of the 2016 Dublin Horse Show Puissance at 7-feet, 3-inches and ridden by Shane Breen / Noel Mullins photo
A constant outpouring of messages of sympathy flew at the sad news of the passing of Frank Burke―West of Ireland horseman and lifetime follower of the Galway Blazers Foxhounds. The messages expressed what so many were thinking: a great warrior, kind and caring, inspiring, a joy to meet, smiling and good-humoured, hospitable, strong, a passion for life, steely determination, brave, tough and positive. Some said they admired his deep faith, a gentleman who suffered in silence from a dreadful illness over the last twenty years, yet remained pleasant and uncomplaining.
Frank knew he was not fighting his battle alone. He has his family in his corner and particularly his beloved wife Bernie, a trained nurse who was his ‘rock,’ sharing both his good days and bad days. And he had sons and daughters, all living as a close family unit. His son David said that his father gave a whole new meaning to the word, tough, recalling when the Hospice Nurse called to the house to attend to Frank only to be told he was out on the farm painting a gate!
Pentathlon Olympic Gold Medalist Is a Horsewoman First
Kate French, a horsewoman from a hunting family, wins the Olympic Gold Medal in the modern pentathlon for Britain.
The battle for gold in Tokyo’s modern pentathlon event involved yet another Olympian drama. Annika Schleu of Germany, comfortably in the lead going into the last day of the finals, experienced a meltdown in the equestrian test, catapulting Britain’s Kate French to the Gold Medal by the end of the afternoon.
Kate French, thirty years old, is at home on a horse. “I come from a riding background mainly; I’ve been riding since I was very little,” she said in an interview. French had horses from an early age and grew up in Pony Club. Her mother is Master of a mounted pack of hard-running bloodhounds, and her father is a Master of Beagles. She is the grand-niece of Derek French, ex-Master of the Eglinton and Caledon Hounds in Ontario (and an author and contributor to FHL).
