Grand Champion of Show Hillsboro Ringo and Reserve Grand Champion Hillsboro Wagtail with (l-r) huntsman John Gray; Hill McAlister, MFH; Emily McAlister; Michael Lindley, MFH; Nina Lindley; Eleanor Menefee Warriner, MFH; Orrin Ingram, MFH, Tom Warriner, and Caitlin Olson. / Linda Volrath photo
Hillsboro Hounds (TN) pulled off a stunt that no hunt had yet achieved in the long history of the Virginia Foxhound Show. Two Hillsboro hounds finished the day as Grand Champion of Show and Reserve Grand Champion of Show for the second time. Live Oak Hounds (FL) did it once.
After having had to cancel the show for the last two consecutive years due to Covid, the Virginia Foxhound Show was held at Morven Park in Leesburg, Virginia on Sunday, May 29, 2022. It was a grand reunion for the many hunting people from across the country who participated, and the weather was fittingly gorgeous all weekend.
Hounds from thirty-four hunts competed at Virginia, but we’re not completely whole yet. We miss our foxhunting friends in Canada and hope that next year will see us together again.
In the final class of the day, four handsome foxhounds―American Champion Orange County Pimple, English Champion Hillsboro Wagtail, Crossbred Champion Hillsboro Ringo, and Penn-Marydel Champion Golden’s Bridge Yeti―came together to vie for the final and ultimate honor, Grand Champion of Show. The lead judge for this final class was Dr. John W.D. McDonald, ex-MFH, London Hunt (ON). Judges from the other rings who had sent the four breed champions on to this final class assisted.
Grand Champion of Show Hillsboro Ringo 2019, Virginia Foxhound Show, 2022 / Linda Volrath photo
Hillsboro Ringo 2019 earned top honors and was chosen Grand Champion of Show. Hillsboro Wagtail was judged Reserve Grand Champion of Show. In your editor’s opinion, the hounds made it easy for the judges this year by establishing the final ranking themselves when asked to show their movement.
By the time competing hounds reach this final class of the day, each has already passed the scrutiny of judges for conformational fault, both major and minor, in their own rings―American, English, Crossbred, or Penn-Marydel―in earlier classes. The four hounds competing for best of show had survived that scrutiny, and one can generally assume that each was a pretty well-made example of a foxhound, basically correct in its conformation. So, what’s left?
Movement!
Or, look at the judging of this class another way. No hound is perfect. So, if the judge looks hard enough, he or she can usually find some small flaw in any hound. So, how is one to separate hounds with minor flaws?
Movement!
And when it came to movement, Ringo had it. He chased after the biscuits effortlessly with long, ground-covering strides. He landed lightly on his feet between strides and took off the same way, all in a fluid and graceful motion. If, when hunting, one were to count the number of strides taken by a long-striding hound compared to the number of strides taken by a short-striding hound over the course of a twenty-five-mile hunting day, imagine how much less wear and tear on feet, pasterns, knees, and hocks are experienced by the long-striding hound and how that would afford it the longer working career.
Wagtail, the pick for Reserve Grand Champion, was the second-best mover in this final class of the breed champions but not quite in Ringo’s league. And the placements went down from there, according to how each hound moved in their turns, in that particular hour, on that particular day.
With the Grand Champion Class over, the ring and the celebration that followed belonged to two Hillsboro hounds, huntsmen Johnny and Leilani Gray, Hillsboro Masters, hound handlers, hunt members, and the photographers. I wormed my way through the celebrants to corner the broadly grinning senior huntsman. Generally spare with words and self-contained, Johnny was bubbling over. And he knew what I would ask him.
“Ringo hunts like a demon,” he said. “He’s all Midland on his dam’s side.” Then he was dragged away for another photograph with his hounds and trophies.
Watching hounds being shown earlier this day, I was often surprised to note how little attention some handlers pay to either improving their own technique or that of their hounds when tossing the biscuit. Sadly, they are short-changing their hound’s chance for a better placement. A hound that fails to show his best movement when asked by the judge―or any movement at all in some cases―gets knocked down in the finishing lineup. Handlers cannot do much to hide a conformation fault in hounds they are showing, but training themselves and their hounds to chase a biscuit more effectively is something they can control!
Hillsboro is breeding lovely hounds, to be sure, but hounds don’t win championships on their own. Huntsmen Johnny and Leilani Gray work extremely hard with hounds preparing for the shows. As a Hillsboro Master said in a recent interview, “They spent twenty-four hours a day tuning up that pack of hounds. That’s when we started winning at the hound shows.”
Hillsboro Ringo 2019 is by Hillsboro Brighton 2012 ex Lowcountry River 2012. Ringo’s sire Brighton is an English hound bred by the North Cotswold (UK) that goes back in tail male to mostly Duke of Beaufort bloodlines. Brighton was drafted to Hillsboro by then North Cotswold Joint-Master Bradford Hooker, a cousin to Orrin Ingram, MFH, Hillsboro.
“Much of the Hillsboro blood goes back to the North Cotswold when we were gifted a draft at the beginning of World War Two,” Ingram explained.
Ringo’s dam Lowcountry River was bred at Midland of mostly all Midland Crossbred bloodlines. The tail female line is all Midland going back nearly sixty years.
Reserve Grand Champion of Show Hillsboro Wagtail 2020, Virginia Foxhound Show, 2022 / Linda Volrath photo
Reserve Grand Champion Hillsboro Wagtail was judged Grand Champion of Show at the Southern Hound Show in April, as reported in an earlier article.
Posted June 7, 2022
The author thanks artist Linda Volrath for providing photos for this article. Volrath is a Signature Member of the American Association of Equine Artists (AAEA). A Jean Bowman Award-Winner, she was recently named the 2022 Montpelier Hunt Races Official Artist. Two of her paintings were selected for the “2020 Hindsight: 40 Years of the American Academy of Equine Art,” exhibited by the National Sporting Library & Museum, Middleburg, VA.