One good turn deserves another…

First published in EDRD in 2015

Paco

It’s been a great autumn, dry and crispy with just enough rain to keep the ground soft, and although a little warmer than I would like it hasn’t been too bad. While I thought I had all those little niggling jobs done round the house and out of the way by Mid September I didn’t and was still wrestling with leaking guttering, power hosing drives and replacing roof tiles off and on while squeezing in as much as I could with the dogs. I had a surprise phone call a couple of weeks back from a friend. I mentioned this fellow before in a previous article as he owned “Paco” the sire of my eldest bitch Fudge. Paco, as I have written was accidentally poisoned not long after his kennel mate Scrap was killed in a hunting accident. That period in time finished my friend with dogs and it has been probably 5 years since he has owned a dog. I answered the phone and the response was “I’m looking for a pup”, “Have you saw the light” I answered, thinking he was joking. “No I actually am looking for a pup, the time is right, how did yours turn out”? I knew what he was playing at! “Not too bad” I said, they are only 6 months yet so a while to go yet. Strangely, I had said to my wife a few days before that keeping two pups was daft and if someone who I would trust (I could count on half a hand) was on the lookout I would let the bitch go. “You could have the bitch from that litter if she suited you” I said, to which he replied “You owe me a pup from that service anyway you got years ago”! The conversation went on so long my mobile started to heat up and I left him that he would be welcome to the bitch if and when the vet was happy & she healed properly and she wouldn’t be going anywhere until it did fully. The little bitch was really going nowhere only he was on the lookout and if I am totally honest I feel I would get a lot more out of Reggie here with his dam. He is turning into quite the dog and is a pleasure to have around the house. He has become great pals with the young Teckel pup and the pair seem to be together in the yard all the time. I have a very small kennel which the pup was sleeping in alone as he was too small to get over the jump board in the big kennel and he was quite happy tucked up in his smaller version. Reggie tried several evenings he would join him and each time pushed his head into the small kennel, knocking the removable lid off  and putting his head up through which resulted in him walking round the yard wearing the pups kennel!

I have done all the usual with the pups and it has went smoothly aside from Reggies jumping. Since they were only small whelps I fed them in a long dish in the yard which I banged with a spoon to get their attention each time. When they ran to leave the shed and the warmth of the heat lamp they were always met with a small board across the door which got a little higher as they grew. I don’t feel the need to make pups jump unnecessarily and potentially damage growing bones but I feel it gets the jumping thing into their mind, or at least it is supposed to. It didn’t do Reggie much good! I had been having trouble getting him to jump fences, and this was made worse by me taking the same routes to exercise them through the fields. The Teckel can’t jump but has no problem getting under and has worn himself little tunnels under the fences we cross all round locally and along the river. Young Reggie seemingly not too keen on jumping can also get through these tunnels and has deepened and widened them as he has grown. I Knew I would have to remedy this problem soon and I took him to a totally new area which had new fencing and without a Teckel to encourage him to go under but his dam to encourage to go over. The first fence had him well closed in, heather growing along the bottom preventing him from going under and a little bit of a slope up on his side was giving him an advantage. Fudge jumped and I climbed over, I encouraged him and tapped my hand on the top strand while saying “Over” as I had done a hundred times but he whined back at me.

Reggie (Squeezing under)

“You bugger” I said, “You can stay there until you jump” and I walked on with the older bitch while he yelped in the background. I turned round and encouraged him again and he now had his head and shoulders rammed tight into of the squares of the wire! I walked on and his whining increased in urgency and volume until I heard a twang! I looked around and he was pulling himself through a hole! He had pushed at the wire until he had either pushed it wide enough to get through or broke it, it was quite rusty and very old so he could well have. “There is no way I am lamping with you and lifting you over fences all night like a plonker” I said to him as he approached me. I then took a detour and got him into an area with new wire that he couldn’t bust through and that was also tight to the ground. I repeated the process again and walked on as he whined. He got louder and louder and ran up down as I kept looking back. I returned, sent Fudge over and called her back twice while he looked on and then I left. He whined a bit again and then looked like he was making moves to jump. Feet up on a strand, back, feet up again. He jerked about, thought about a little and then run back, came forward and got his front paws on the top strand and sort of bailed over in a big clumsy ball! “That’s it” I shouted! I took him round and back over again and he jumped a second time only this time a little better. I didn’t want to push my luck and headed for home. The next few days he jumped everything I put in front of him and although very clumsy and gangly yet, we are right on the way to me not having to lift him over fences out lamping, like a plonker!

Jumping – At last!

I woke last Saturday morning, and looked out through the curtains. A nice crisp morning and the dogs were already outside in the yard below on the other side. I got a quick breakfast and within half an hour was on the road with plenty of coffee, the radio blaring on the one remaining mud covered speaker on the door and Fudge and the Teckel in the back. My van really is a wreck now, people actually make jokes about it all the time but it has never let me down and has nearly 300,000 miles on it so I can’t complain, I almost don’t want to change it at this stage in case I get something that starts being a nuisance, this one has been over ploughed fields, crashed into a river and been pulled out, bogged into dozens of lanes and ditches and carried any species you can hunt in Ireland!  I had no plans to go anywhere in particular, just cover as much ground as I could over the day. I really enjoy not having a planned day, just load the dogs and drive. I ended up in an area usually pretty reliable for a run and I have had some great ones here. One field in particular we are usually always guaranteed some sport. The Teckel hunted to my right as we walked the first stretch, checking every clump of reeds, and occasionally turning back just to double check. He is no earth dog, but I wouldn’t be without him for what I was doing today. He stopped ahead and began to whine loudly into a clump of rushes with his tail going full speed. I knew there could be nothing there as it wouldn’t sit that tight for that long and approached him to see. He was sniffing and snorting into a lovely form which the lurcher followed into with her nose and the scent was obviously very strong – I hope whoever had sat in it wouldn’t be far away, but after walking many more miles we saw absolutely nothing. I was surprised; this particular area is always good. I moved a few miles further and tried some other spots where I have permission, but again we saw nothing, not even a rabbit! The pattern continued throughout the day and I don’t know how many miles we walked but I was starting to feel it. Both the dogs worked hard and in particular the Teckel had really tried hard all day, and was caked in mud and goose grass and his ears were cut to bits inside from the briars! The only hunt he had all day was after a big black cock pheasant which he hunted along a hedgerow before getting too close for comfort and he exploded into the air. I stopped along the railway line and tied the dogs on leads just in case they wondered off near it. I am scared stiff of bloody railway lines since a few years when I was lamping along here and decided to walk the line as a shortcut back to the van rather than going the fields I had come through. I must have walked a good two miles and decided I was close enough to the van when I cut off the line, onto the ditch and within no less than thirty seconds the train went by rattling and clattering and leaving me almost dizzy with fear. I haven’t been as shook up in a long time. It was so windy I hadn’t heard it come up behind me and I have never walked on it again at night! I sat for a while and considered my next move, Home! I had been on the road since before eight and it was approaching 5 and it would take me over an hour’s drive and then I had dogs to feed and the yard to wash down and the ferrets to muck out, what a crap day it had been, not a run to be had or even a tail to be seen!

I made for bed early on Saturday night, it seems those days of hunting all day on a Saturday, doing the town on a Saturday night and being away again on a Sunday morning aren’t as easy as they once were. I again woke early, got away early and was on the ground again early. My first port of call was some big land (Big for round here) which I had been intending to do since it was cut, it was alongside a large willow plantation and it too was an area I had marked out for a mouch earlier in the season but just hadn’t got there yet. I screeched the van up at the gate, let out the Lurcher and Teckel and zig zagged the field for the next 45 minutes or so before getting to the rear of the plantation. Its quite large and half a dozen Teckels would have been more suited but today I only had one and even on his won it wasn’t long before than familiar bay began. The Lurcher cocked her ears and run is his direction, pushing through briars and whatever else was in the way. The baying disappeared off left and into the distance but appeared to come back around. The Lurcher came up one ride and back down the other, and for a second I thought the two had met, surely whatever it was had to be somewhere in the middle. The lurcher re-appeared and the Teckel stopped baying. I stood still listening with nothing but the bitch panting beside me. Suddenly the Teckel opened up again, seemingly coming our way and so I held her collar and dropped back out of the way, hoping that whatever it was would let us have a better chance if we stayed out of the way and let it into view, but the baying moved to the right and away towards the big field. I ran across thinking that it might break the cover and hopefully into the field, I followed on and just caught the coming out onto the field, checking and going back in further up. He went quiet and we saw no sign of him for ten minutes or more. I got out onto the field and he appeared, tail wagging & soaking but still keen.

I tried the plantation for another hour, going in and hunting through at different sides, coming off the rides and going back towards the field but it wasn’t our day, time to move on. I done plenty more miles that day, checked many, many more spots and saw nothing more except rabbits, one of these the Teckel chased to ground and went up a tube until he got stuck, only a few inches below the ground and I had to (sort of) dig him out. It was a poor weekend with nothing to show for all our miles, but it doesn’t matter, I was out about and the dogs tried hard, that’s all that matters I suppose.

Teckel – Stuck in a rabbit hole

In between starting this article and finishing it, I had the young bitch along to a greyhound / running dog specialist about 3 hours from home to get a proper diagnosis on her injury. It appears is it did the last time I had the same problem that “Pet Vet” was again badly wrong and the leg was in fact broken – The calcaneus to be correct and to put it into his own words “It’s a bloody disaster”. What happens now? An expensive operation that cannot be guaranteed to solve the problem. His advice is that while it is tricky and difficult it could work, but on the other hand it may not. But I feel I at least owe it to the young bitch to try. If indeed she heals well, then there is no reason she cannot go back to the county where her grandsire once hunted. After all, hoping as one good turn deserves another.

Since this article was published 7 years ago, the vet did a fantastic job on the little bitches leg and she made a full recovery and ran like the winnd for many seasons after. The van mentioned did another 89,000 miles making a total of 389,000 and was runninng very well when I finally decided on something a little tidier!

“La Tank” By Citroen