Mad dogs and Englishmen
catherine.austen@futurenet.com
“This was the first occasion I had ever turned up to a meet in the master’s helicopter”
Montreal Hunt Club (Club de Chasse à Courre de Montréal), Quebec, Canada
“WHEN I was judging at the basset trials in Virginia, it dawned on me that your hounds become you,” huntsman Andrew Marren told me, as the sun burned the morning mist out of the wooded valleys near Cowansville. “People who are lackadaisical, their hounds are lackadaisical, and people who are excitable, their hounds are excitable. And I realised that I’m a big fat Englishman, and I have big fat English hounds.”
“Big fat English hounds” hardly does the admirable hounds of the Montreal Hunt Club credit. They are predominantly modern English foxhounds, with a great deal of Ballymacad blood which in turn goes back to the Beaufort. Mixed with that is a certain amount of Fell blood to give what Andrew
