Foxhound puppies sent out of the kennels to live at hunt members’ and supporters’ farms for socializing are said to be “at walk.” It’s sort of like summer camp for the pups, and it happens every spring and summer. When destruction to yard, garden, and shrubs exceeds the limits of the puppy walkers’ tolerance, the hounds are returned to the kennels. By that time, the puppies will have grown and prospered, learned their names, been introduced to the lead, and more or less socialized. A break for the huntsman, an education for the puppies, and an annual delight for the puppy walkers.
The author and her family have walked puppies for the Blue Ridge Hunt (VA) every summer for nearly twenty years. This blog was first published in Foxhunting Life nearly ten years ago and this being the time of year when hound puppies are out at walk, we thought it would be fun to bring it back.
Monarch with rope“Incredibly destructive,” I muttered yesterday evening as my husband, Bill, and I were eating dinner on our screen porch, watching these two terrorists drag the cover to our outdoor grill across the patio. Because they are hound dogs, nothing is off limits. Their little noses find the smallest scent and their first reaction is to either chew it or dig for it. A crumb or a caterpillar, a two-day old footprint from a passing varmint, or a newly plopped horse turd sends them into olfactory ecstasy. I’ve tried to imagine being able to smell everything a hound dog can smell…what a new world that would be.
I look forward to the puppies every summer. They make me smile, and what better way to spend a day?
I’ve put the puppies in their stall this afternoon. We’re expecting a heat-index of 104 degrees, dangerous weather for the very old and the very young. Monarch and Motive live in an extra stall in our old bank barn, which was built, half-underground, near the turn of the 20th century. Like a Virginia cavern in the karst countryside around our farm, the basement of the barn is lined with limestone boulders, which help to keep it cool in summer and warm in winter. I scatter the stall with pine shavings and throw a couple of balls in there, along with an old horse blanket, a bowl of water and one full of puppy chow so that they can entertain themselves before I wake up every morning and during these hot mid-July afternoons.
Motive and Monarch have been here for a week now, and the introductions have been pretty smooth, except for Spud. I neither can nor ever will trust old Spud. He’s our pit-bull, rescued from the Ester Boyd Animal Shelter about eleven years ago this summer.
We rescued Spud and brought him home and gave him the potato name. Small dogs fit easily inside Spud’s enormous jaws and he has a switch in his block head that sometimes tells him to eat one, so I don’t really trust him around the puppies. Now that he’s old and gray and a little feeble, he’s slightly more trustworthy. Still, I worry.
In 2003, when Bill’s father passed away, we inherited his young German shorthaired pointer named Jake. Poor Jake is “as numb as a pounded thumb” as they say in Maine. He’s a hound dog too, but a bird dog—nothing but little birds flying circles within his brain. He’s not fond of the puppies because he’s normally the baby of the family and they rob him of his status. They are annoying little creeps in his opinion. He stays clear of them, but they usually pester him until he snaps. He’ll not bite them, just growl and bark, which they ignore.
MotiveMotive and Monarch love Ashie best. She’s the German Shepherd that Bill and our youngest son, Robert, found in the woods while camping one weekend around eight years ago. Just as they were pulling up tent stakes to head home, she bounded out of the woods, asking to come along. “You’d be mad if I hadn’t brought her home,” Bill said, though I knew that it was himself he couldn’t have lived with if he’d left her behind. She is all things Shepherd: loyal, attentive, considerate. She’s also a blond in the advanced stages of obsessive compulsive disease. When the puppies come to Green Spring Farm each summer Ashie takes over with benign resignation. She looks at me as they climb on her shoulders and nip at her lips, tug on her tail and bite at her feet, with patient and hapless eyes, forgiving me once again for subjecting her to her annual plight.
As evening came on, we took our daily walk to the pond. I use this walk to teach them to follow me and the other dogs, to learn their names, and how to walk on a leash when we head for the barn on our return. The sky was darkening when we set out, but I didn’t give it much thought. It’s my favorite time of day. A few lightening bugs are still rising and blinking from the long grass. The sun’s glare that had washed the colors from the fields throughout the day, softens to deeper liquid shades along the tree lines edging the fields. Ashie leads, the puppies follow, Spud trips along as best he can, Jake is off chasing imaginary birds since there are no more quail in our countryside. Our pond is really just a big mud hole this time of year. Ashie takes the pups for a dip. Motive likes the water, but Monarch isn’t too sure.
As we climb up the bank of the mud-hole pond lightening strikes not a mile away. The sky above the Old Stone Church at the western edge of our property is dark purple and the rain is already coming down hard on its tin roof. Spud jumps at the sound of the crack as though he’s been hit. We’re alone and completely exposed in the middle of the hay field. I’m reminded of a friend’s horse who was hit by lightening in his own field and killed. “Run,” I yell.
I’m not a runner. I’m not built for it. I tried when I was younger, even ran a 10-K once, after which I hung up my running shoes, or rather I threw them in the back of my closet, and never ran “for fun” again. The sight of me running across the field with old Spud, Ashie dashing in circles wondering at the new game, and the two puppies in grass over their heads, trying to bound but tripping on their ears and tongues, must have made God smile.
Posted July 30, 2012
Martha Wolfe is a foxhunter and writer. Her historic fictional account of The Great Hound Match of 1905, has been a hit.