What’s in a Name?

Now that I've settled in to my retirement home, I can start thinking more about hunting and hunting people. Hounds like me get to see and hear all sorts of stuff, but not many of us get a chance to tell you humans what we think – so I'm going to make the most of my chance to do exactly that. 

Like who on earth called me Orpheus? And why

Well, its a convention thing you see, each year most packs pick the next letter in the alphabet (unless for 'traditional reasons' they miss a letter) and I was born on an 'O' year. Orpheus was a mythical singer that had a great voice so I suppose I was well named as I do have a great booming baritone voice and I am not afraid to use it when pursuing the local rabbit population. I suppose I am lucky, in the past some foxhounds have had the names 'Tosspot' and 'Toilet' given to them, now that really IS unlucky!

But this naming thing is not only peculiar to hounds, it also happens to hunts, and it not a bad thing either.

As their circumstances change hunts grow and amalgamate and to reflect this growth they sometimes change their names, fortunately as Baily's subscribers will know (and I am just finding out) we are the only comprehensive database of current hunts and hunt history, so even name changes are always captured, they are never lost to history. 

One of the things I've heard about recently has been the name change at one of the foxhound packs, and that some of the humans who follow them don't want it to happen, they want to keep the old name. I did hear that there's been a lot of argument about this. Maybe it's a basset thing as we are used to packs changing their names and amalgamating but I can't see why it should matter what the pack is called, the important thing is that they keep hunting. I also think that we get enough flak from the humans who don't like hunting (or is it that in reality they just don't like us?) without giving them more ammunition by fighting about such little things publicly. 

Given that TB is meant to have put in his book that he tried to sabotage the horrible Hunting Act. (I'm not sure that we can believe him, if he really wanted to do that why was the Parliament Act used to force it through?) but I digress, this is the best possible news we could have and yet people fail to make the most of it, but concentrate their efforts arguing about name changes!

It's about time that the hunting humans started concentrating on the important things like telling others the truth about what we do, and stop wasting time on the little things. Otherwise more lies and half-truths will get spread, and people will think that these must be true because we are too busy fighting ourselves to tell them the facts.

New Season, New Beginings

It's been a very strange week. Last Saturday, it all started as normal in the kennels and there was nothing to suggest that my whole world was about to change. Then, late in the morning, a couple of strange humans turned up and I found myself hauled out of the pack and going on a long journey – what had I done to deserve this! The journey was enlivened by me entertaining a French family who were so busy admiring me they almost forgot which side of the road they wanted!

I guess this means I'm not a working Basset any more! On the plus side, I am now allowed in a house with the others in my new pack, and can enjoy my retirement now that we have worked out the pack order – or almost, as Jake (a Springer and therefore psychotic) can't quite accept that I'm number 3 after the humans. I'm sure he'll come round in the end.

Of course, the whole retirement thing was a bit of a surprise. The others at kennels had been talking about how some humans who don't like hunting had been telling stories that hounds who can't keep up with the pack any more get killed off, which had me worried as I struggled a bit last season. So you can guess that I was pretty chuffed to be sent to a new home instead.

This got me thinking about the way that humans say things that are not true or twist things around if they think it will make other humans do something that they want. I guess that some of the humans who don't like hunting have said a lot of things over the years to make others think that what we do is bad, and to make out that it's OK for them to be nasty to us and our humans just because they don't like us. I think that's stupid, and there's no excuse for being violent whatever they think about us.

At least we hounds always let you know exactly what we think about things. And I think that I could have a lot of fun in my new home.