Early days

Inspired by Brian Plummer’s books when I was a lad I set my heart upon having my own lurcher. My first bitch, ‘Dancer’, was bought from the Chipperfield circus family. I picked her up at 12 weeks from their winter quarters where the pups where housed in an old leopard cage. They had been running with the bitch hunting rabbits already. Hours of training resulted in the most obedient dog I have owned to date.

I started her on the lamp but had limited success due to a lack of rabbits. Ferreting was more productive and she would mark buries accurately almost without fault. One day I was ferreting with a friend and Dancer was marking strongly in one spot. However, the ferret kept coming back up. My mate said that the dog was wrong, so I took my spade, dug down under the bitches nose and there was a dried up rabbit skin.

At the time I was working on a farm that had lots of hares, and after work and in lunchtimes we would walk a field or two and get a run if we could. More often than not, she would pick up a hare after fairly long courses. She wasn’t the best hare dog in the world but when I watched her hanging behind her hare waiting to strike it was something else.

I then purchased a rough coated bitch that I named‘Spider’ and ran the two as a pair on all quarry. They would take anything from a rat upwards and gave me great sport. Deer and foxes were no problem and both could take them single handed. One night we where out on some ranges and they caught a big dog fox which we had called in. Spider, who was a bit keen, bit the fox so hard she put one of her canine teeth through her own top lip! Barbed wire was a nightmare and both dogs needed stitching at some time or another. One afternoon, I was walking my wife to be across a stubble field with the dogs (as you do) when the dogs spotted a pair of roe and were off like a flash. Unfortunately, they went straight through a barbed wire fence and Spider tore the inside of her leg from groin to knee. A trip to the vets and twenty or so stitches later and yet again I was starting the season with crippled hounds!

I used to keep chickens which roamed around the garden during the day and I thought that it would be a good idea to train Dancer to help catch them at night. There was a broody hen and chicks which she would catch every evening and bring to me alive. Then I was late home from work one evening and Dancer went and caught all the poults on her own. When I got back the whole brood was lined up dead by the pen. Oops! Mum had some lambs which she had put on a neighbours paddock and when they had eaten the grass she couldn’t catch them as they were nearly full grown. I took the dogs up there and in two minutes they had caught the lambs and I could carry them home. The neighbour couldn’t believe the control I had over the dogs as they just released the lambs on command.

Sadly those dogs are long gone and they have been a bit of a hard act to follow.