The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Couthy terriers hunt terrors
The Doyenne and I have enjoyed meeting two of this spring’s puppies – both now six months old, still full of mischief and desperate to say hello to everyone they meet. Leisel is a Norfolk terrier, not a well-known breed in Scotland, and she’s just the fourth example I’ve met. Norfolks are one of the smallest of our terriers and for all their sweet nature with humans, like other terriers, they are terrors when it comes to hunting.
They seem to have been bred principally for ratting in the pre-combine harvest days of farm stack yards when hordes of rats wintered in the stacks of corn waiting to be threshed in the spring. When the stacks were opened, the rats poured out and all the ratting terriers in the district were brought in to hunt them.
Holly is a black cocker spaniel with a white blaze on her chest who came from Invermark at the head of Glenesk, and she has a string of field trial champions in her pedigree. She’s fastbecoming known as Holly-No, which gives you an idea of how she’s testing the limits of her owner’s patience.
Cocker spaniels are a familiar sight on the shooting field. Bred as working gun dogs, they are never happier than when working, but they adapt well to family life.
Both breeds are affectionate, biddable, socialise well, are good natured, energetic, even tempered and very loyal. Their owners’ temperament can rub off on dogs, and knowing Holly and Leisel’s owners, we’re sure these two pups will grow up to be interesting characters.
First own dog
While dogs have always been part of my life, I’ve had little to do with breeding them. However, my first “very own” dog, Molly, was a mixture of springer spaniel and collie bought soon after I brought the Doyenne back to my family home, the former manse at Logie Pert, between Montrose and Marykirk.
With our newly born daughter Cait asleep in the back of the car, the Doyenne and I drove one wild winter’s evening to a farmhouse somewhere near Methlick, in darkest Aberdeenshire, to see some puppies which had been advertised as purebred springers. I guess I thought it would be fun for the Doyenne to have a puppy to look after in her idle moments. I wouldn’t get away with that now.
The pure-bred mother was brought into the kitchen trailing three puppies behind her. I didn’t have much wits then, but I remember saying to the breeder that the pups seemed rather long in the leg and they had awfully short, pointy ears, not the least like a springer spaniel’s.
I was assured that their bodies would “grow into their legs” and the ears would develop normally over the next couple of months. The mother was a couthy animal, which is always a good sign, and we chose the puppy with the waggiest tail. £6 changed hands, the baby’s nappy was changed, and we headed for home.
Double trouble
What I didn’t know was that a bitch can mate with and produce puppies to two dogs – what the vets call a mixed litter. The pure-bred puppies had all gone to wiser, more experienced buyers than me, doubtless for a lot more than £6.
But Molly turned out to be a nicenatured dog, good in the house and protective of the children. She did have a predilection for hens, but we’ll draw a veil over that.
She was also the toast of the countryside whenever she came on heat. Copper, a tan springer from the farm up the road, would appear every morning awash with testosterone and urgent desire and haunt our garden all day until hunger drove him back up the hill for his supper. Lovesick as ever, he was back again with the dawn.
Despite my best efforts to keep Molly confined indoors, she managed once to escape and I found her and Copper inelegantly united at the foot of the garden.
Without the traditional bucket of cold water to hurl over them and separate them, I had to let nature takes its course. We were thankful that Copper’s efforts proved blank.
Our neighbours’ daughter, Susie, had a miniature dachshund called Monty who was Molly’s most ardent and dogged follower.
We’ll never know whether Monty stood on a straw bale or Molly stood in a ditch, but Monty and nature had their way and Molly produced some strangelooking offspring.
Only one, Thaddeus, survived. We were lucky to find a home for him, as he had short legs, a long body, an undershot jaw and a wild, bite-yer-leg look in his eye that said he preferred to get his own way.
He was well enough disposed towards humans, but short-tempered and inclined to pick a fight with other dogs – the bigger the better as far as he was concerned. But he was the high point of my dog
breeding career.