Horse & Hound

Fashionable foxhounds: the dangers of standardisation

THAT great breeder of foxhounds, Ikey Bell, wrote a magical book of anecdotes, full of his knowledge and experiences of foxhunting. A Huntsman’s Logbook was published just after World War II. In one of the chapters, entitled “Standardisation”, he regrets that the foxhound, as a breed, had become so uniform in type.

He says: “There was a time that had I met a stray hound in the road, in most instances I could have made a shrewd guess as from what kennel he hailed. Nowadays one could not be so certain.”

In those days the fashionable hounds came from Belvoir, were dark coloured, of the heavier type,

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