Halo: two years getting home / Illustration by Rosemary Coates
From The Hound Intelligence Series, published by Hounds Magazine (UK), edited by Deirdre Hanna, illustrated by Rosemary Coates. Click to purchase the 333-page collection.
Red Rock Halo by Lynn Lloyd, MFH
Years ago, in the mid-1980s, the Red Rock Hounds (NV) hunted an area in Northern California called Spencerville. The drive from Reno takes about four hours and crosses a mountain pass exceeding fourteen thousand feet at the summit. Here in Reno, we are about 5,500 feet above sea level, so the climb is substantial, and the range is vast. It is the same Sierra-Nevada range and the same pass (now Interstate 80) where the doomed Donner Party met their fate over the winter of 1846/1847 when they became snowbound migrating westward.
We were hunting for three days. On the very first day, scenting was good and we ran a smart coyote for about twenty miles. Returning to the trailers I discovered I didn’t have Halo, one of my very best bi*ches. Not to worry. We had two more days of hunting and she was not ever to be left behind, so I was sure she would be at the trailers that night.
After checking well into the night, there was still no sign of Halo. Hopefully, morning would bring her home.
Arriving at the fixture the next morning, I was not met by Halo, but by a scruffy, rough, ill-smelling fellow who had set up camp there that night. He met me with his gun and informed me that he had run that “damn dog” off from the blanket and food he had left.
The next two days of hunting and looking for Halo proved unsuccessful, and I had to return to Reno without my wonderful hound. The only hope was that she was wearing a collar with my name and number, so I could wait patiently for a call. Well, wait I did…but no Halo.
Fast forward about two years later. I was in the kennel feeding hounds, and down the driveway walks Halo. Oh, my goodness, I’m not sure what is happening. After hugs, licks, and lots of whining, I discover she has large, leaking teats and a prolapsed uterus. It’s off to the vet for spaying and a checkup, and that wonderful hound gave me eight more seasons as one of the hottest hounds I have ever had in kennel.
It took her two years to get home, but she had covered at least three hundred miles. She crossed over a fourteen-thousand-foot mountain range, made it through two winters, and also has a litter of some kind of pups. Who knows what the sire was―a coyote, a house dog, a cattle dog? That was when I sure wished hounds could speak our language!
Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Chester by Ivan Dowling
There are countless stories of hounds returning from far and wide after losing the pack during a day of hunting. Entered hounds know their country, however, and the worry isn’t so great. But this story is hard to explain.
Every fall, several miles from the kennels a very well-attended community fair is held. One year the hunt was asked to bring some hounds for a demonstration. We thought the children would enjoy seeing some of the puppies. So, we loaded six eighteen-month-old pups onto the trailer in what was to be their first trip away from kennels.
Once there, we found no convenient parking near the designated enclosure, so we walked the six pups through the throng of people. When hounds entered the enclosure, Chester was missing. She was gone. What to do? After searching for as long as we could, someone reported a sighting of a hound in a housing development nearby. It was decided to wait until things quieted down and go on searching for her later. Which we did. When it was time to go home, Chester was still missing. Nothing, however, prepared me for the sight that met my eyes the next morning.
There was Chester, sound asleep outside the kennel door! I have absolutely no idea how to explain it. How did she possibly know where to go? She had never been off the property before. She had not been anywhere, in a trailer or otherwise. She had somehow found her way through dense housing developments, along a heavily-trafficked roadway, over a round-about, and then a couple of miles of country, ending up back where she had started.
She has, however, been careful to stay with the pack ever since!
Ivan Dowling is huntsman of Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds (PA)
Posted July 12, 2021