My Life with Lurchers

Product Information

The office is not a selling point (to put it mildly). I am sure David knows where everything is but it looks as though it had its last clear out in the mid 80's and does not give the impression of a professional efficient business. I have to say that I found their knowledge, approach and management to be much better than I first expected when I entered the office. CxG will produce a much stronger, racier pup. If you like, just for the sake of explanation, a Collie bitch x greyhound dog will produce a pup more like a 5/8 greyhound. But the best physique is squandered without keenness in the chase and immense determination, an alert eager expression in the eye indicates this and is essential. A judge has to ask himself: will this dog hunt? Can this dog hunt with this anatomy? Better judging, based on a more measured assessment, should lead to the production of better dogs. Fieldsports folk have too much sense to allow such a concept to degenerate into the pretty polly state prevalent in the pedigree dog show rings. Lurcher shows are a bit of fun; the only real test for such a dog is in the chase. But that 'bit of fun' can raise standards too if the judges' criteria are sound. Who wants to win with an unworthy dog?

INSTINCT. Collies have the herding instinct in their genes. Even a town bred collie, if taken into the countryside from 6 weeks and reared as a farm dog will grow up like a farm dog. The instinct is deep in the psyche, all it needs to bring it to the surface is ENVIRONMENT. Environment and training. In his 'Hunting Big Game in Africa with Dogs' of 1924, the American Er M Shelley describes how the catch-dogs were not allowed to run with the trailing hounds but held by natives until they were needed. This was the role of the hunting mastiffs in medieval Europe. This is why I believe the term 'bandogs' referred to leashed catch-dogs and not to chained yard dogs as many writers record. The risks to the dogs in hunting big game are described by Shelley: "Dogs are very fond of hunting them (i.e. warthogs), but it usually proves disastrous for the dog, for these hogs have two long tusks that protrude far out from the lower jaw, and they use them with deadly effect. Dogs can be maimed or killed much more readily by hunting these hogs than by hunting lions." Conclusion: Keeping the Blood: Eternal role, certainty of catching game with hounds against likely maiming with guns. Loss of instinctive canine skills, threat of feral pig, value of lamping dogs. Remarkable survival of the lurcher down many centuries. Vital need to keep the blood alive. if the demand for his dogs is such he will keep breeding dogs to sell for profit to any 1 that turns up.when you go to his premises he is a polite person who is very hard not to like.the problem is with his business any 1 can buy a dog from him. i am absolutly 100% happy with the dog i bought and i will comment on his premises are not up to scratch.Between 1611 and 1680, gamebooks reveal that around 40,000 wild boar, sows and young boars were killed in Saxony. In 1737, King Augustus II himself killed more than 400 wild boar in the course of a single hunt in Saxony. John George II, killed over 22,000 wild boar in 24 years. In the Bialowieza Forest in 1890, in a fortnight's hunting, 42 bison, thirty-six elk and 138 wild boar were killed. This is the frame in which to picture the Great Dane type as a bison hound, auroch hound, staghound and boarhound. Perhaps because of the wholly arbitrary division of hounds today into scent or sighthounds, multi-purpose hounds which hunted 'at force', using scent and sight to best effect, have been neglected.

Assessing the merits of a terrier may have to be changed if not going to ground is a criterion, i.e. judging the dog on what it is expected to do, rather than what it is banned from doing - as a working role. I believe that it is entirely fair to state that of all the types of dog ruined by the effects of the Kennel Club-approved show rings the Terrier Group has suffered the most. This is sad for a number of reasons: firstly, the Kennel Club was founded by sportsmen, with the Rev John Russell an early member and Fox Terrier judge; secondly, the breeders of those terrier breeds recognised by the KC boast of the sporting ancestry of their dogs -- and then dishonour it, and, thirdly, some quite admirable breeds of terrier have been degraded, even insulted, in this way. Discounting the Airedale, never an earth-dog more a hunting griffon, and farm dogs like the Kerry Blue and Wheaten Terriers, which were allrounders rather than specialist terriers, all show terriers should only be called full champions if they have passed an underground test. If you take the first cross C x G and mate them together you can get some nearly pure greyhound, some nearly pure collie and some c x g - I don't know how to draw on a computer, but because you 50% of each on both sides, you can get 100% of one or other.

No, you don't. You need good base lines, but breeding lurcher to lurcher, however good they work, is a lottery. It always has been and always willbe UNLESS you know the exact lines of each - but that is more selective breeding than just worker to worker. He is a ‘volume breeder’. On each for the 4 or 5 visits that I made I recon there were approx. 10 litters between 0-8 weeks. Before a wild boar harms a child in rural Britain, a likely occurrence if a sow is accompanied by piglets, some form of control makes good sense. Shooting wild boar is not easy and a wounded boar is doubly dangerous. Although ignorant do-gooders would never sanction it, boar-hounds, or boar-lurchers, seizing the boar by the ear for immediate despatch by humane-killer is a kinder option. Our distant ancestors knew the value of such seizing dogs; we have unthinkingly pursued the shooting method - and that is not wise - or the most humane. Some dogs in such dangerous work might well get killed - that is the nature of such a form of control. I have heard Kennel Club show judges scoff at the whole business of even attempting to judge such wide variations at a show but then they aspire to judge best in show at Crufts, which could see a Chihuahua alongside a Great Dane. The ideal lurcher judge is a man who has hunted with one himself, a man who visualises the dog before him in the ring in the chase. But I believe that it is possible to judge lurchers more precisely than the all-too-usual highly subjective judgement by eye, without ever spoiling the fun and country atmosphere of these shows. I suspect that some lurchers succeed in the ring in spite of their anatomy; that's not good for breeding plans.

It would be good to see appropriate recognition for the boar-lurchers or hunting mastiffs, whether described as docgas, bandogges, seizers, holding dogs, pinning dogs, perro de presas, filas, bullenbeissers or leibhunde. They should at least be respected for their past bravery and bred to the design of their ancestors. A big game hunting breed like the Mastiff of England seems prized nowadays solely for its weight and size. The Englische Dogge ( 'dogge' then meant mastiff) was once famous throughout central Europe as a hunting mastiff par excellence. It is a fact that, in the boar-hunting field in central Europe in the period 1500 to 1800, many more catch-dogs were killed than the boars being hunted. In those days there was a saying in what is now Germany that if you wanted ‘ boars' heads you had to sacrifice dogs' heads’.In these conservation-minded days, tales of derring-do in hunting big game, whether in Africa or Asia, Central Europe or South America, are no longer considered worthy of admiration. And, whilst I welcome our more compassionate contemporary approach towards such hunting, we must be careful not to condemn such past activities by viewing them solely through 21st century eyes. Big game hunters were once regarded as heroes by their contemporaries. They usually endured great hardship, were vulnerable to a wide range of often life-threatening diseases and were equipped with less reliable firearms and ammunition than today. Most shooting of big game nowadays is more safely conducted through the camera than the carbine.