Foxhunting Life with Horse and Hound

Canadian Grand Champion Eglinton and Caledon Noel 2006 / Paul Wilson photoA lovely English bitch—a veteran of five hunting seasons—was judged Grand Champion at the Canadian Foxhound Show at the London Hunt and Country Club on June 11, 2011. To emerge as Best in Show with that accumulated mileage is quite an achievement. There had to be a story here, so I looked up her pedigree.

Eglinton and Caledon Noel 2006 is descended from all modern English on the sire’s side and fell hound bloodlines on the dam’s side. The answer to her achievement was there, but I didn’t put two-and-two together until I talked to huntsman Steve Clifton.

Full Cry Largo, hunting back home, just after being judged top hound at the Belle Meade Foxhound Performance Trials. She still carries her number 17, which was painted on her for the competition. Adrian Jennings photoFull Cry Largo was judged top hound at the Belle Meade Foxhound Performance Trials held in Thomson, Georgia on February 25 and 26. Belle Meade Lifeguard was runner-up to Largo, and, with three hounds in the top ten, Belle Meade took top honors among the hunts. For complete results, click here.

“Largo's story is a great testament to how hunts and huntsman can work together to help each other out and find the right fit for hounds,” says  David Hyman, MFH and huntsman of the Full Cry Hounds (AL). “It's truly a unique fraternity.”

Slipping quietly away

Many of the MFHA-registered packs in North America have close associations with Ireland and the UK either through hunt staff, field members, jockeys, or through the many Irish and British field hunters and racehorses that grace their hunting fields. One such well known pack is the Green Spring Valley Hounds in Maryland, USA. They met a few weeks ago at Ned Finney’s farm at Dover and Dark Hollow, which is close to the Maryland Hunt Cup racecourse and Shawan Downs racecourse.

Walter Pady (right) was photographed recently with fellow Canadian 3-day team members John Rumble (left) and Brian Herbinson. Denya Massey Clarke (also shown) is the daughter of the late Stewart Treviranus, another team member of the three here.
-Andrew Clarke photo

Walter James Pady, ex-MFH of the Toronto and North York Hunt (ON) was killed tragically in an automobile accident on Monday, August 9, 2010. Walter, 77, was well-known and much loved throughout the world of horses and hunting.

He was a member of the first Canadian Olympic Three-Day Team, served as voluntary Chair of the Canadian Jumping Team, CEO of the Royal Winter Fair, and as Canadian District Representative to the MFHA. In recent years he was a member of the Eglinton and Caledon Hunt (ON) and an honorary whipper-in to the Pond Hill Beagles, his wife Jane’s foot pack.

Marilyn Mackay-Smith recalled the occasion in 1953 when Walter Pady and equestrian icon John Rumble introduced the Three-Day format to the Canadian Pony Club Rally for the first time. The Canadian Pony Club uses that format to this day, and the U.S. Pony Club followed suit.

Walter was a welcome visitor in many hunting countries between Ontario and the Carolinas, when visiting during the closed winter season at home. Likewise, he showed hospitality to many foxhunters from other hunts when the Canadian hunts put on their Ontario Festivals of Hunting. Walter was a sportsman and a gentleman, and he will be sorely missed.
August 15, 2010

Leica eventing at age 24. She placed third because she was too fast cross country.

Leica was a remarkable horse whose career took her from incorrigible youngster with a vicious buck to an impressive third-place finish at age twenty-four in the grueling MFHA Centennial Field Hunter Championship. She was still hunting and showing at age twenty-seven, when she had to be humanely euthanized as the result of a pasture injury.

With her bloodlines and dazzling good looks, Leica was primed to be an outstanding dressage horse. An imported bay with touches of white, she was registered Hanoverian (by Lindberg, out of St. Pr. Kari) who was also entered in the main stud book of the RPSI (Rheinland Pfalz Saar International) and Holsteiner registries.

But after abuse from trainers who pushed her too far too fast, Leica had other ideas, says owner Julie Whitlock McKee of Grantville, Georgia. McKee acquired the hard-headed mare at age four after the trainers gave up on her. The pair did not get off to an auspicious start, with Leica rearing the first time McKee threw a leg over her. Rearing and bucking would become a regular occurrence.