Hunting for the future

First published in Irish Country Sports & Country Life, Winter 2019.

A beautiful November morning and the only sound I could hear was the rustling of the grass behind me as a 5 month old Teckel “Poppy” (I didn’t name her my wife did) did her best behind me to keep up, she was drenched from the dew but it dampened her spirits little. She had only come with me as she had been making a nuisance of herself in the house and I had taken her out of the way. I didn’t expect any ducks along the river and had thought it might be better that there wasn’t as the little pup was not yet acquainted with gunshot and the last thing I wanted to do was make her gun shy. I had however associated her with everything else up to then, the hoover, cordless drill, hammering in the shed etc. I even put her in an old canvas bag back in Mid-September, slung her over my shoulder and let her share in the misery of grass cutting on an Autumn day when there is so many better things to be doing. I took her in the car, on the butcher’s bike and introduced her to people, cats and as many other dogs as possible. All these early introductions I feel make things a lot easier for the long term. There are many schools of thought regarding young dogs and how they should be treated and introduced to the world. One side will say let the puppy simply be a puppy and he or she will work the world out for themselves. If that pup is to be gun shy then no number of small introductions and reducing distances will make it any different. Like wise if that puppy is to grow up and be “odd” with other dogs, no amount of socialisation will solve it and perhaps the same with hunting. All the small introduction and short days might be fine, but if it is in the dog to work well then work well he or she will regardless of how many introductions and small hurdles is the other school of thought. As I meandered both on foot and in my mind with a Teckel in tow a brace of Teal sprung up in front of me and I fired two successive shots, bringing down a bird with the second which landed on the bank. I realised I had the pup, thought I shouldn’t have fired and looked round to find her looking up at me inquisitively. I doubt we will have any problems in the gun shot department thankfully! I fetched the duck myself from the rivers edge and left it where she could find it. You will see in the photo that she had no problem picking up the Teal and walking along behind me with it, even at this young she is full on confidence and takes everything in her stride. I had little experience of dogs and gun shyness simply because I have never trained a gun dog per se, but I just like my Teckels to work with the gun now and again, not to Field Trial level of course! But if I can take them raking along a hedge on a frosty morning it adds so much more to them and the day. For gun shyness I have found at least as far as Teckels go, they either are or they are not. I had one Teckel who was slowly introduced to gun fire with starting pistols and so on because he was my first and I tread very carefully, building things up but from the day he heard a shot gun it was over, he was terrified even if I took a gun into the dog yard he would run for his kennel. One of my other Teckels, Oscar simply went for a walk one morning and I happened to fire a shot and he carried on just as Poppy did, only now if I fire a shot he runs to look for it as do the rest. So perhaps with my young puppy, yes nature will do her work and if she is to be good she will be good but I don’t see any harm in giving her a helping hand. One thing she certainly does not lack in is instinct and I found vey early on that it runs deep in her small veins. I do on occasion usually in summer, set out tracks for the dogs with deer blood if only to give them and myself something to work at over the long evenings. I have been learning as much as them and after doing some trails in late August I left a fallow skin out along the side of the field overnight and forgot it was there. As a very small Poppy walked with me early the next morning and we came across it she began to pull and bark at it! I had a similar but slightly more peculiar incident only a couple of weeks back.

I had been working in the garage and went round before locking up to feed the ferrets. I walked round the small path between the fruit trees to where they live and Poppy followed me, I collected their feeding bowls and returned and began to fill them up. My phone rang and I was probably 5 minutes or less but during this time young Poppy was going mad outside growling and barking and sounding very excited. I suspected a ferret had got loose and went to investigate to find her barking and growling at a dead fox on the side of the path I had just came down. It looked very fresh and I reached down to touch it but expecting it to be cold and stiff and thought perhaps one of my friends had dropped it there as a joke but it would have been impossible for me not to see them and I found the fox still very warm, in fact it was almost too warm to be normal! Its mouth was still moist inside and it really did look as if it had literally dropped dead in the garden! The little pup was having none of it however, and I had to remove the fox to settle her down! I did then notice it had a rather odd shaped head and was in poor condition so I froze it down and it is to be collected for testing by DAERA. It appears that genetic memory in the canine blood runs deep indeed.

My older Teckels have been getting on very well this year and hunted as part of a pack in early September in County Waterford where together they flushed a few foxes. Two days later Oscar and Rubble flushed a large fox right behind my house which I shot, it was the second ever fox I shot as I usually dont.  A few days later while exercising along the river Rubble started an awful racket and Oscar joined him as they bayed up and down the bank for ten or so minutes. I assumed an old fox scent but when they settled at a larger than rat, smaller than rabbit sizes hole it appeared a Mink was our culprit and although we hunted the river many more times since and checked the hole it appears they run him out of town as there has been no sign of him since! Rubble often has run ins with aquatic mammals seems to be endless and a few weeks back I took him along duck flighting as even at a young age he is often an incredibly sensible and very biddable dog unlike his kennel mates, and if he is asked to wait he will and if he finds a duck I shot he will retrieve it. We were sitting on the river bank on the glowing moon when something splashed in the water, which was low as the tide was out. I looked expecting a duck but couldn’t see anything. Rubble squared up beside me and began to quest the air, and as I looked into the river right below us was a large Otter who could obviously scent but not see us was standing looking up, a very unusual sight. He stood a few moments until my German comrade opened up like a mastiff and took off down the river bank and into the water after it! I had a bit of shouting to get him back but he did in the end!

Rubble is a large Teckel with very broad shoulders and a deep chest and unusually for his type is very biddable and well behaved, he was sired by a lovely German dog called Bruno who I saw working back in September and is very much the Rominten Del Lago type. He too is an obedient, laid back character but very much the genuine Iron hearted Dachshund when it is required. Rubble has only been with me a short while but in that short while we have had much sport. He is as fond of duck hunting as blood tracking and will slip into a fox earth like a rat up a drain pipe. As is there style, Rubble’s only aim is to flush vermin from underground and it suits me perfectly well as I have not the time nor the inclination on a days hunting to be carrying all manner of tools to retrieve a dog from deep under the ground! I will happily leave that to the terriers and terrier men, Teckels are not terriers and terriers are not Teckels. He has caught rats, flushed all manner of game birds, hunted rabbits, foxes and mink and trailed deer scent which I have left for up to 48hrs sometimes and together with my little Oscar who I have written about before they make a great team. What one lacks the other makes up for and while Rubble may not be as fast on the leg as Oscar he is more precise and slower with his nose and checks less when following a scent but can be slower to keep up, so together the pair make for some very enjoyable sport.

So while my young Poppy has been Duck hunting and learning from her Kennel mates who are schooled in all types of country pursuits there has been a small puppy born in Mannheim, Germany to Eyka Vom Linteler Forst and sired by Sig Sauer of the Bismarck Eiche. “Cider” has literally hit the ground running and at only 10 weeks old as I write has tagged along with Julia Szeremeta who I am very grateful too for her kindness in looking after Cider until she can travel, to a driven fox hunt, a driven Boar hunt and had some experience on the blood trail of a shot Boar where she reached the end, looked him in the eye and placed her paw on his snout, No genuine Teckel bows down in the sight of a Wild Boar! This weekend Cider will attend a working test in Germany to ensure steadiness to shot along with some other formalities before I travel to Mannheim in January under the guise of a shooting weekend. If a Teckel decides to jump into my luggage end up back at my house there is not much I can do, I am hunting for the future.