A very generous, and last-minute invitation saturday afternoon saw us at the Iroquois Hunt Club, feeling decidedly underdressed, at their inaugural Hound and Puppy Show, a prep for the “big one” in a a couple of weeks time in Middleburg, Virginia. Hound and puppy shows are quite popular in England, sometimes as part of the county shows and horse shows, sometimes they stand alone, and as soon as I saw the refreshments I felt right at home!
Pimms!
Despite the genteel surroundings, dress code, manners and traditions that are upheld within the hunt,
the Iroquois is innovative and on the cutting edge in a number of ways. I’m surprised and proud to discover that that the Iroquois is one of very few hunts that has an active Hound Welfare Program. As Huntsman for 8 seasons, Lilla Mason explained to me,
“If we can get more people involved with the hounds, and to love the hounds then that’s great. If they come on the summer hound walk, and there was Hamlet, for instance, and then next year we culled him or shot him and Hamlet’s not there…they know.”
The fact that the Iroquois Hunt keeps the hounds for their entire lives, (Master Miller has 13 retirees living in his house, Lilla told me!) also provides a unique research opportunity.
Scientists at the University of Tennessee and the University of Wisconsin are using the Iroquois hounds to support a study on the effectiveness of a newly developed vaccine for Blastomycosis.
Small children who have cancer and need bone marrow transplants can get Blasto and it is fatal. The fungus is indigenous to the Ohio Valley area.
Hounds can also contract the disease but survive it with treatment, and because the Iroquois maintain detailed health records on generations of dogs, the kennel is uniquely positioned to aid their efforts.
My daughter Lily was thrilled to be asked to help with the special class for retired hounds, and Lilla wanted to assure me it’s a complete myth that hounds do not make good pets once they’ve finished hunting. Lily and Glog, made a beautiful couple, and we can now add Glog to the list of things, “please please please can I have…”!
It’s love!: Lily and Glog!
The Iroquois Hunt encourages involvement from it’s members who were out in force at the puppy show, and I was impressed how many of them knew so many of the hounds’ names and characteristics, as well as breeding. Lilla told me,
“At our hunt we really try to encourage members, once they enjoy riding with us, to expand their knowledge and get an interest in hounds as well because it just enhances your enjoyment of the sport.”
Many of them join them out on exercise during the summer months, as Cecilia explained to me,
The Iroquois Hunt is also active in protecting the habitat, and has won awards for it’s conservation efforts. The Hunt was founded in 1880, and named after the first American horse to win the English Derby. It now has 52 and a half couple of hounds, and hunts three days a week during the season which runs from September to March.
However for Lilla the hunt season really begins at the end of March,
“That’s when we beginning training the new entries, so from the end of March until the first day of Hunt season we walk the hounds every day. We start the first two months on foot; that’s when the hounds learn commands, get individual attention, and we address their individual personalities. By the beginning of september, when hunting starts they need to not be individuals anymore but need to work as a pack and to be in symphony, so it’s sort like an orchestra – you tweak the horn players and the violin players, so that when hunt season opens it’s a symphony, they’re all on the same page, everybody’s together and when you go out it looks seamless. It’s just like anything else, if it looks easy it was really hard to get there”
Lilla talks from experience, because she’s also an accomplished eventer and more recently pure dressage rider, she says in her spare time, but as she combines her huntsman duties with a full-time office job in public relations, I’m not sure how she has any!
Although I’m beginning to feel right at home, there are some key differences between the hunting here in Kentucky and in back home in England.
“We hunt mostly coyotes, so the hounds don’t get as much learning time as hunts that just hunt foxes. For instance the hounds could find a coyote the first day of hunt season and they run very fast so puppies have to know to keep up, the first day of hunt season we could have a six mile point, it’s not like English hunting where you have cubbing. The coyotes are a different quarry to foxes; I enjoy hunting coyotes because they don’t go to ground, they’re very clever, and they’re really fun to chase. They do a lot of things foxes do but the points are longer because they stay above ground.”
Timing is also different here because the Iroquois hunt on Sunday afternoons, which my daughter and I did last year for her birthday present, and it struck me as quite civilised!
“Well, here in America we couldn’t hunt during church time, many people go to church in the morning on sundays and you know how hounds are, we’d probably end up with hounds in fully cry by a church and offend a lot of people! It offers more for the members too though, especially for those with children; at 2 o clock it’s a bit warmer by then, those aren’t usually are hardest days because it gets darker sooner, but it’s easier on families that way.”
Lilla has fond memories of hunting in England and Ireland,
“I was blessed to be able to hunt with some of the best hunts in England because when the coyotes came into our hunt country in the late ’80’s we had the wrong kind of hound to chase them, we had a low sitting, trailing fox-hound pack and it wasn’t working, the coyotes would get our hounds at bay and they weren’t doing the job. Master Miller decided to go all over England, Ireland and France looking for just the right kind of hound that would suit our country. Fortunately I needed to go to organise his horses. We spent many, many hours in kennels with kennelmen and huntsmen, talking to them and watching the hounds. Some of my best memories are of sitting in the valeting rooms in the kennels with the cigarette smoke and the coffee smell and talking to those guys for hours because I learned so much that way. It’s just fabulous to have had that opportunity.”
I’d like to thank Lilla Mason, and all the members of the Iroquois Hunt Club for talking to me yesterday, and for being so kind, welcoming, and knowledgable about their hounds and heritage. Please click on the link to find out more about the Hound Welfare Programme, or check out the Iroquois Hunt. Thank you for reading, and go out in the countryside and go eventing!
