Champion hounds
The hound show season is underway, so what are the judges looking for? And what does it take to produce a champion?
What constitutes a winning hound? Frank Houghton Brown explains
No sooner, it seems, than the hunt horses are out in the field to freshen up on spring grass following an arduous hunting season, than a huntsman needs to polish his boots and buttons again – not, this time, for the opening meet in front of some stately home but for the summer hound shows.
The strange thing about showing a hound
on the flags is that it’s impossible to judge many of the most important
characteristics that make it a good hound: a deep, melodious cry; that low scenting ability that allows a hound to hunt a line down a road or track; or perhaps “fox” sense, that innate knack of just knowing which way the line has gone. Sagacity on a hunting day is an invaluable and ethereal quality but is part of a very personal bond between hound and huntsman, “the golden thread”.
Before a hunting hound can ever test its qualities on the field, it needs to have the physical attributes to do so. The specific conformational requirements for most breeds of dogs in the show ring have long since diverged from any correlation to some form of work for which the dog may be used. Hound shows are entirely the opposite. Low scenting ability cannot be judged on the smooth surface of Peterborough show ring but the ease with which a hound can cover the ground to get in the right place to hunt the line can certainly be judged.
Foxhounds will be on the move for in excess of five hours on a hunting day, loping along at an unforgiving pace and covering 30 miles or more, hence the need for a horse to keep up. Harriers and beagles are probably busier still, churning around all day like little dynamos and even basset hounds, despite their doleful look and Queen Anne legs, take some living with on a good scenting day.
It was once thought that the advent of barbed wire would sound the death knell for hunting,
but now a wire fence is the normal field boundary, stretched tight and often placed flush to the hedge. Hounds need to either leap over or crawl under every single one of these obstacles, time after time in a single day. On the Fells there are specialist fellhounds, bred to speed up and down the nearly vertical slopes of the Lake District, across scree and boulder-strewn banks. Longevity is an important trait in any hound, particularly in the Fells where the knowledge that a hound gains from its hunting experience can be used to help the pack. A sixth- or seventh-season hound is invaluable but to reach that point they need the conformation to withstand the rigours of six seasons hunting.
During the summer, there are five major hound shows: the
South of England, otherwise known as
Ardingly, being the first, followed by the Welsh Hound
Show, Harrogate and then the blue riband event of Peterborough, now the Festival of Hunting. The West of England Show at Honiton is last, followed by the top event for fell hounds at Rydal show near Ambleside in the Lake District.
Sir Philip Naylor-leyland has been Joint Master of his
family pack, the Fitzwilliam, since 1987 and is chairman of Peterborough Royal Foxhound Show. He puts it like this: “Quite simply, Peterborough is the culmination and pinnacle of all the foxhound showing during the year. It provides the gold standard to which all foxhound breeders aspire.” The Fitzwilliam hounds show every year because, as Sir Philip says, “We are effectively the host pack.” However, they last won a championship in 1914 with a hound called Wiseman 11. “I do not rate my own abilities at foxhound breeding but have been lucky enough to have Simon Clarke and latterly Martin Scott, both foremost breeders, to help breed our hounds.”
Scott is the living authority on foxhound breeding, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the foxhound kennel studbook. He hunted both the Tiverton and VWH hounds himself, but now breeds the VWH hounds with great distinction. It’s a pretty sure bet that if the VWH hounds are in attendance, they will be somewhere in the prizes and their Footloose 16 won the bitch championship at Peterborough last year.
Beautifully balanced like a model on the catwalk, Footloose is bred in thepink, from champion stock both on the flags and in the field. “Her dam, Pumpkin 13, won the brood bitch class last year and her sister, Puzzle 13, won it the year before,” Scott points out. “According to our huntsman, Philip Hague, her siblings have great activity and enthusiasm to go hunting and they all have tremendous drive. Her full sister, Fortune 16, was champion at Honiton and is something special.”
STUDYING BLOODLINES
Tremendous thought and detailed planning go into the breeding of top-quality hounds and Scott studies the bloodlines as if he were mixing the correct quantities of different rare ingredients into a special potion. “Footloose is line bred back to VWH Doric 00 and his sister, Dazzle 00, by that great working hound VWH Gardner 95 and out of a wonderful track hunter, Daring 97.”
Scott spends much of his summer travelling the country as a highly respected judge and has bred an amazing six Peterborough champions. “A champion hound must be the one that can go the fastest and the farthest for the longest. It must have quality. It should have a good shoulder for pace and turning ability, good depth for heart and lungs, a strong back with a good hind leg, to propel it up and down hill and good feet that will last.”
With any livestock, a good shoulder seems to be the principle requirement and Scott explains exactly what it means. “The shoulder blade is laid back so that the foreleg will go forward straight: the longer the stride the greater the speed. If you have a hound with a barrel-shaped chest, the elbows will either stick out or be tightened in; restricting the
forward stride and the feet will wear as a result, reducing the longevity of the hound. My first Peterborough champion, Darius 04, and his brother and sister, all hunted into their 10th season. Longevity is a wonderful asset and at my age I don’t mind telling people.”
Before the First World War, all foxhounds at the shows were of the Old English type, with predominantly tan colouring and heavy of bone. The great American hound breeder Isaac “Ikey” Bell revolutionised British hound breeding by using Welsh cross hounds that were much more athletic and, in his words, “many Masters criticised me at
A champion hound must be the one that can go the fastest and the farthest for the longest
the time, some actually declaring me to be ‘a menace to foxhunting’”. Bell’s revolution in foxhound breeding slowly took hold and eventually pure Old English breeding was confined to only a handful of kennels. There has been a recent resurgence in the Old English type and special classes at many of the shows for Old English type hounds. They have been improved by judicious breeding to be much more active and lighter in bone.
Rydal show, set in a beautiful punchbowl of Cumbrian countryside, is the Peterborough of fellhound shows, where the Eskdale & Ennerdale pack from the high western Fells triumphed last year with its young doghound Clasher 16. The Porter family have bred these famous hounds for generations and many of them retain the old-fashioned brindle colouring synonymous with this kennel.
“Light and agile is what we are looking for,” explains Edmund Porter, the father figure of the hunt. “We have some rough country and you should breed hounds that suit the country.”
Edmund’s son, David, is a Joint Master with his father and a local auctioneer. “Fell hounds have a fairly small gene pool and the best hounds usually come from the same bloodlines. Clasher’s brother, Roamer 16, won the championship at Lowther show and his sisters are also good ones. They are home bred and we try to use as much of our own blood as possible.”
Fell hounds have “hare feet”, long toes like a hare, which are especially suited to the rough terrain. “They are built to last,” David Porter points out, “and longevity is so vital on the Fells as they need to understand how to hunt in the rocky places.”
SKILL AND PRACTICE
It is a demanding task for a huntsman to show his hounds and an artful showman will get the best out of his hounds through both skill and practice. Nigel Peel, who was Joint Master of the North Cotswold for 30 years, bred the champion doghound at Peterborough last year, North Cotswold Rallywood 16. Before the North Cotswold had built such a reputation for its champion hounds, Peel had a wonderful kennelhuntsman called Charlie White, who absolutely hated showing. “I always enjoyed taking the hounds on exercise and when we came back, Charlie’s wife would cook us both breakfast,” Peel remembers. “One morning, some good-looking young hounds caught my eye and I mentioned to Charlie that we would take them to Peterborough. His face dropped a mile at the very thought of it. At breakfast, Mrs White was so worried as to what was wrong with Charlie that she asked him, ‘Have you been sacked?’ Charlie replied, ‘No, it’s worse than that. I have to go to Peterborough.’”
Hare hounds would have usually been shown on a different day to the foxhounds but some agricultural shows have moved their dates. Where this has happened the hound shows have stuck to the original date and brought all the different types of hound to be shown on the same day. The Festival of Hunting at Peterborough is the perfect example. The Holcombe Harriers from Lancashire have been the outstanding hare hound pack on the flags for the past few years and their huntsman, Steven Ashworth, is an absolute master at showing his hounds off at their best. An outcross to the blackand-tan Scarteen hounds has given many of the Holcombe hounds a distinctively attractive dark colouring and they move across the show ring like quicksilver.
Sir Philip may not yet have won a championship at his own show but the Fitzwilliam did win the unentered doghound champion in 2015 with Bretton. When I ask him how he’s endeavouring finally to put his hands on the champion cup he says, with tongue in cheek, “You had better ask Martin. Our future success is in his hands, but so long as there is a hound show in Britain, there will always be a Peterborough.”