Histories for Horsepeople
From ancient times to the recent past, most family histories were preserved by story-telling from generation to generation. Today, with families spread across continents, if not around the world, and no one living next to the old folks to even hear their stories, how are family histories to be preserved?
Karin Winegar has a solution. She provides a unique service which she calls “Histories for Horsepeople.” Karin writes and produces privately published family or hunt histories meant as special gifts for family, friends, business associates, and/or members. She describes herself as “sort of a private family scribe.”
Nation’s Top Horse Trainers Gather for Michael Richardson Benefit
I spent a grand week in Aiken, South Carolina recently. It was business first, with three book signings scheduled: one at the beautiful Willcox Hotel on Tuesday (Horsemen’s Night); Wednesday at Equine Divine, a lovely gift shop for all things equine; and Thursday in Camden at the Tack Room. It was a week to see old friends and make new friends. After three days of business, there was a day’s hunting with George and Jeannie Thomas, MFHs of the Why Worry Hounds. A Hunt Report of that day is in the works to be posted shortly.
I stayed with my friend Art Richardson, ex-MFH of the Wayne-Du Page Hunt in Illinois. Art and wife Judy leave the cold weather behind every year and spend the winter months in Aiken. Art hunts with the Aiken packs and brings his two grand-daughters, Mackenzie and Virginia, to visit and hunt with him as often as possible. Life is good for us.
Well…most of us. For Art’s son Michael, life could be better. Michael is a horseman and was a foxhunter in his younger years. At the age of twenty, Michael was involved in an automobile accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down. That’s not the current problem, though.
Remembering Cliff Hunt
Clifford Hunt, a genuine old horseman and a passionate foxhunter, passed away on December 2, 2010 at age eighty-four. I can’t begin to tally the number of individuals whose lives this man changed. He was a teacher who created many dedicated foxhunters. He was a hosteller, and, with his wife and partner Laura, he provided visiting foxhunters with bed, meals, hirelings, and transport at his well-known Hunting Box in Boyce, Virginia for twenty-six years (1978–2004). Sportsmen came to The Hunting Box from Canada and all the northern states to experience foxhunting in Virginia. Many loved it so much they moved here.
Juniors Meet in Pennsylvania for 2010 Junior North American Field Hunter Championships
Lauren Giannini photo
For their first seven years, the Junior North American Field Hunter Championships took place in Virginia, mostly at Old Whitewood, part of Orange County’s country in The Plains. However, after Alex Matz won the First Flight (12-and-Under) championship in 2009, the notion of staging the next finals in Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire country came to fruition. Blue Ridge Hunt’s David Pawlak partnered with the indubitable Paris to ace the individual test in the First Flight and claim their second consecutive 13-18 championship. Makayla Benjamin (Loudoun West) and Butterfly Painting went home with the reserve tri-color.
Puppies of Two Species
Courtesy of Full Cry: A Hound Blog
WHAT a beautiful day Saturday was! It started with a crashing thunderstorm that prevented me from riding over to catch our trailer ride to the day’s hound walk, so we houndbloggers went out with the hounds on foot for what turned out to be a Very Special Morning.
Iroquois huntsman Lilla Mason brought the hounds, including one-year-old Driver and many of the BA litter, to Boone Valley Farm instead of to the usual meeting point on the farm across from The Corners. The change of location was exciting to the hounds. The older hounds, Paper among them now, associate Boone Valley with nearby Pauline’s Ridge, one of the richest coyote coverts in the hunt country and understandably a place that holds great interest for experienced hunting hounds.
To the puppies, the field trip was especially exciting. New sights, sounds, and, most importantly, scents! New country to explore!
Video Link
Walter Pady, ex-MFH (1933–2010)
Walter Pady (right) was photographed recently with fellow Canadian 3-day team members John Rumble (left) and Brian Herbinson. Denya Massey Clarke (also shown) is the daughter of the late Stewart Treviranus, another team member of the three here. -Andrew Clarke photo Walter James Pady, ex-MFH of the Toronto and North York Hunt (ON) was killed tragically […]
The Road Warriors: Days Eight, Nine and Ten
Photojournalist Betsy Parker, her friend Beth Rera, and Beth’s seven-year-old son John embarked some days ago on a cross-country horse-hauling odyssey—Virginia to California—to include a West Coast summer vacation tour. Since Betsy can be counted on for compelling copy and excellent photography, FHL went along for the ride. Betsy’s earlier reports may be found under the Horse and Hound drop-down menu/Travel.
I will compress the last three-and-a-half days of epic tourism into tidy note form. Any of these subjects is deserving of its own report, if not chapter, and in some cases a volume, but I’ll keep to the strictest of pyramid-style reporting.
Left Merced hotel midmorning Tuesday to get to Crane Flat in Yosemite—the only walk-in campground within the Yosemite National Park with any chance of getting a site without twelve-month advance reservations. Pretty drive in, through California farmland. We left the valley about forty miles out from the park and began rising steadily, through changing elevation/topography/flora and, I’m sure, fauna. It got downright breathtaking, with valley views and granite outcroppings after we entered the park proper (Yosemite National Park is surrounded by a million acres of National Forest.)
Myopia Gallant 2008 Is Grand Champion at New England
June 25, 2010Myopia Gallant 2008, a handsome example of the modern English foxhound, dominated the flags at the New England Hound Show on June 13, 2010 to emerge Grand Champion. With Exmoor bloodlines on both sides of his pedigree and Heythrop blood in abundance on the male side, Gallant surely benefitted from the renowned breeding mastery of the late Captain Ronnie Wallace, who had brilliant tenures as Master and huntsman at both hunting establishments in the UK.
Old North Bridge Dandy 2002, a venerable brood bitch for that Concord, Massachusetts based hunt, was judged Champion American Foxhound. North Country Nacho 2004 traveled south from New Hampshire’s and Vermont’s Connecticut River Valley to capture the Crossbred Championship. And the Penn-Marydel Champion was Shakerag Valor 2007, a traditional black and tan hound full of Andrews Bridge bloodlines on the top side.
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