Joint meets

People love 'em, people hate 'em, people disagree about 'em!  Here's something I wrote quite awhile ago:

There are occasions to ride with hunt clubs of which one is not a member.  There are joint-meets, where one hunt club will invite another to join them for a meet.  At joint meets, hounds from both hunt clubs may be mixed and hunted together, or hounds from one of the hunts will be used.  The Masters of both hunts will ride together, the staff members of both hunts may or may not ride together, and the field members of both hunts will ride together.  Generally speaking, it is not appropriate to invite additional guests to a joint meet, simply because the Field is already larger than many hunt countries can accommodate.  When in doubt, consult the Master of the hunt club to which you belong.

Many people would not consider it a joint meet unless the packs of hounds are mixed and hunted together.  In other areas it's quite rare to mix packs.  Why?  The main reason is deer.  Many hunts have difficulty deer-breaking their hounds.  In strange territory they are not sure their staff can get to the right place at the right time to correct this problem.  And they don't want to expose their hounds to another hunt's problems, whether that means a potential deer chase or simply different methods of hunting.


The same is true for inviting another hunt to bring its hounds for a joint meet.  No one wants to invite a pack of hounds that are suspected of chasing deer.  Yes, a well-established pack that's honest and biddable and trustworthy won't be ruined by one outing with a few deer-chasers but it also won't produce a day of good sport.  If one hound starts on deer, that alone will put all the good hounds on edge.  The erring hound needs to be corrected.  How that is handled may have an adverse affect on a lot of the other hounds.  In other words, many of the best hounds will simply quit hunting in the face of these conditions.  It may be only for awhile or it may be for the whole day.  Some hounds will be more affected than others.

And the pack trusts its huntsman to be fair.  In a sense, they trust him to protect them.  The hounds want to hunt.  Good hounds want nothing more; they want desperately to hunt.  No one wants a good chase more than those hounds.  If they're doing the right things, they don't want to be around trouble.  They've got to trust their huntsman to resolve the problems and hand out punishment fairly.  When they're in a strange situation, they don't know what to expect.  Every small upsetting incident erodes a little of their trust in their huntsman.


Another problem with mixing packs and hunting them together is the potential clash of personalities among the humans.  Generally it's logical for the huntsman from the hosting hunt to go ahead and hunt the hounds.  He and his staff know the territory and all its potential pitfalls.  But each hunt's staff has a particular style of hunting and there can be huge variations.  It's difficult for visiting staff to simply follow along.  It can be difficult to match the speed at which huntsman and hounds and staff draw a covert.


On the other hand, it can be great experience for hounds.  Experienced hounds enjoy different fixtures and their potential for holding game.  They can be quite competitive and joint meets can have an energizing effect.  Inexperienced hounds can be shy but they'll never get over that without more exposure, as provided by joint meets.  And a good experience can definitely move forward their education.  Any "different" experience for a shy hound, whether it's performance trials or joint meets, can be a big challenge.  In some cases it can make or break them -- their shyness will get better gradually or they may become so overstimulated that they never really recover.


Careful choices by both hunts will make or break the day.  Both hunts should leave problem hounds at home.  That means possible deer-chasers as well as excessively shy or excessively aggressive hounds.  (I must say I've never seen a problem with a hound being aggressive at a joint meet.  The hounds know they're there to hunt and they're all business.)  Each huntsman should be aware of the other's style and try to compromise a bit.  The same is true for whippers-in.  The hosting whippers-in should understand that the visitors want or need to be in positions to see as much as possible.  The visitors must trust their hosts to do their best.  If a hosting whipper-in says that he needs to go down a certain path at a certain speed, the visitor has to trust that there are good reasons for it.

Of course, everyone's life will be easier if there is good communication -- throughout the day!  Huntsmen, this means you!


If each hunt brings reliable hounds, there will be little need for correcting or rating hounds.  This is a good thing because it's the most likely to ruin the day.  Everyone rates hounds differently and for different reasons and nothing will upset a hound more than being rated unfairly.  Good hounds have a strong sense of right and wrong and are not happy with what they perceive to be unfair persecution.  Different levels of problems are tolerated by different hunt staffs.  Babbling and dwelling can be particularly difficult to judge and the corrections needed can be especially problematic.

Really, it sounds pretty simple.  When a huntsman goes into a covert, he wants hounds to spread out and hunt.  In the process of moving through the covert, he wants hounds to go move with him.  When he leaves the covert, he wants hounds to come to him.  Sounds simple, right?  It's not.  There are so many shades of gray and variations.  There are an infinite variety of situations and infinite reactions to them.  That's exactly what makes the sport so interesting.

[Why is it that multiple Masters are always referred to as joint MFHs but a joint meet means two hunts coming together?  If three hunts come together it's generally referred to as a tri-meet but one seldom hears of tri-Masters.]

Blank days

Blank days.  Everyone dreads them.  Well, not everyone.  People riding green or unfit horses don't mind a blank day early in the season.  That's especially true when the weather is hot early in the season.  When hounds are not completely fit a hard chase on a hot day can be dangerous or deadly.  (More on heat stress and heat stroke in another post.)

Blank days can be a good thing.  Really, you need a mix of hunting conditions to get the best out of your hounds.  Blank days and difficult days teach the hounds patience and persistence.

If you consistently have blank days, hounds will quit trying.  If you rarely have blank days, hounds will get frustrated and get up to mischief.  In their frustration the less patient hounds will consider or actually try out running riot.  This is not a terrible thing.  If your young hounds have tried running riot and been corrected, you will have steadier hounds.  Now, if those hounds are not corrected, at the right time and at the right intensity, you will have a problem.

Almost all modern foxhounds prefer to run fox or possibly coyote.  They've been bred for that for a long, long time and they really do seem to prefer it.  A lot of hounds, probably the majority of them, will stay on the line of a fox when that line crosses a deer track.  If there are plenty of fox, many hounds will never look at a deer.  Or a rabbit.  I would argue that in that situation you don't know what you've got.  When you make breeding decisions, you don't have all the information.

If you have a group of good hounds who are generally honest, that's great.  But if you have a stretch of bad hunting -- several slow days in a row -- and one or two or a few of your good hounds either start chasing deer or follow along when a pup starts on a deer, that's a valuable piece of information.  And if that happens a second time in the same circumstances, while you may choose not to get rid of that hound you will probably choose not to use him or her for breeding stock.  I would use a less brilliant but steadier hound for breeding.

If you have blank or difficult days with some regularity, you will find out a lot more about your hounds.  Some will keep on hunting, working hard, every time you go out.  Some will get lazy.  These probably won't instigate anything, good or bad, but will allow someone else to do the hard work and then join in on the chorus.  In an ideal world, every hound in the pack would be that honest, hard-working, persistent hound.  In the real world, it's pretty tough to create that pack.  The best you might hope for is a few of those great hounds and a lot of the lazy but honest followers.

Deer are so prevalent in most hunting countries that it's easy to take hounds out and test them.  It's pretty easy to test and correct young hounds during mounted hound exercise.

That situation doesn't tell you about your slightly older hounds.  They know what hound exercise is and they're not easily fooled.  And one blank day won't necessarily tempt them.  If you have three blank (or nearly blank) days, some of those hounds will start to get frustrated and they'll be tempted to do the wrong thing.  Of course these are the best hunters, the ones with the most drive, the ones that are fastest on a chase.

You will see some huntsmen protect these hounds.  They hate those fixtures with no game and those days that are just impossible in terms of scent.  Yes, too many blank days will also damage a pack, if not ruin it, but hounds have to hunt in all conditions.  On those bad days when a good hound is tempted, that's the opportunity to correct him and bring out his honesty and make him a great hound.  When a pup starts on a deer, you want that great hound to come back to the huntsman and plead that he had nothing to do with that garbage.

Some few hounds never need that correction.  Many good hounds need one minor correction which might even be aimed at a group starting to riot.  The huntsman and his staff have to know their hounds, know their territory, be in the right place and do the right thing.  Opportunities for correction must be seized and used and not avoided.

(I'm sure I want to think about this and say some more.)

Good days and better days

Someone recently asked me if it would make me nervous to have Mr. Big-Wheel Famous Foxhunter visit and hunt with us.  I didn't need to think about that for long.  The answer is no.  First of all, I'm not a huntsman.  (ha!)  And second of all, as I told the inquirer, we'd probably have a blank day.

Now that's a pretty negative attitude and we're all about the positive attitude these days but Murphy's Law is still in force.  In the hunt field there are good days and there are better days but you seldom get the real crackerjack days when you "need" them.  When that rare event happens, it very definitely is a great feeling.but I've become resigned to the more usual outcome.

And here is something I learned from Michael Brown at Rappahannock Hunt:  if you mix two or three packs and hunt them together and have a blank day, no one can say that one pack is better or worse than the other.  (And mixing packs is definitely a topic for its own post.)

Everyone wants his own hunt to have a good pack of hounds.  Everyone wants to enjoy a good day of sport (whatever they think that may be).  Most people want their pack to be able to show off to guests.  The truth is that blank days happen for a lot of different reasons.  Experienced foxhunters know that and ought to accept it as part of the game.  I suppose if they don't accept that they try out a lot of different hunts or give up the sport.  Everyone hunts for different reasons and different people find a good match at different hunt clubs.  That's all good but if you had a great run every time you hunted it would become ordinary and expected.

Staying home

One of the attitudes implied in The Morning of the Meet (from Foxhunting in North America by Alexander Mackay-Smith) is that you owe it to the hunt staff to show up.  Well, yes and no.  The hunt staff does indeed put in a lot of work in order to show good sport.  Part of their motivation is to put on a good show for the members.  That's true.  Those who love the sport want to share it.  If someone is interested in the sport at all, the devotees think that one good day of hunting will get that person hooked -- and sometimes it works out that way.

But there are many different reasons to hunt.  Yes, the staff members are as ardent as anyone about sharing and promoting the sport but the truth is that the staff is concerned with showing good sport because it's good for the pack!  A real barn-burner of a chase isn't always the best thing for a pack but finding game regularly is essential to the education of young hounds and the development of a pack that works together.

So, what's my opinion on when you should stay home?  Well, as I said, everyone hunts for different reasons.  Everyone should suit himself but that means there are considerations.  If you hunt infrequently, that doesn't hurt my feelings but you need to do the right things for your horse and for yourself to ensure your safety and that of everyone else.  If your horse is not fit, come and hunt but stay in the back.  Don't hold up other people.  It's really common sense, whether your horse is fit or not.

There are days that we hunt . . . well, there's no good explanation.  I think Masters feel a certain pressure to hunt a lot so that the dues-paying members feel they are getting their money's worth.  There are many days when the hunt staff looks at the members and thinks (or says!), "I wouldn't be out here if I didn't have to be."  No one enjoys those really bad weather days.

Many hunts can't go out during or after really bad weather because the ground won't take it or the landowners don't like it.  And we can all understand that.  If you have the "luxury" of being able to hunt in any weather, outerwear has gotten so much better that it's silly not to take advantage of it.  Also, when you consider that our sport is competing against many other sports and activities, we really should do what we can to minimize discomfort.  If that means using nontraditional clothing occasionally, why not?  Yes, the appearance of a field in traditional turnout is a huge attraction but it's really not a requirement for every hunting day.  If traditional attire was so important, we'd do like the old days . . . after the formal opening of the hunting season, formal attire was worn to every meet.  How many hunts do that nowadays?

To drag this back to the starting point, I do agree with most of what Mackay-Smith has to say but changing times result in changes in foxhunting.  I think we recognize and are more tolerant of the various needs and challenges that face each individual.

Or maybe it's not an issue of changing times.  Maybe it's that I hunt with a small hunt which is always striving to increase membership while Mackay-Smith was surrounded by established, secure, popular hunts.  If you have a waiting list of people who want to become members, you can have a different attitude and enforce different rules.

Showing up or not

In commenting on The Morning of the Meet (from Foxhunting in North America by Alexander Mackay-Smith), I certainly cannot speak for every hunt.  Just as the corporate culture varies among different corporations, the culture varies considerably among different hunts.  I agree with the main points of this piece but times have changed.

I hate to jump into the middle of this piece but this line is the one that really hits me in the eye.  "If, after an hour or so, you go to the Master or Field Master and ask permission to leave this is a type of rudeness which only very special circumstances can justify and explain."  Well, yeah, but . . . really!  When this was written, standards were different and lives were different.  Now, everyone has a job and everyone has many demands on his time.  If you come hunting and decide to leave early because you're bored with the slow day, that is rude.  It's also stupid.  There are plenty of blank days out hunting.  If you hate that, take up steeplechasing.

If you know you'll only be able to hunt for a few hours, I don't have any problem with that.  It would be nice (not to mention polite) if you arrive early enough to speak to the Master or Field Master and warn them of this.  And when it's time for you to leave you should at least signal one of them.  The best way for you to get back to the meet may be obvious.  Or it may be that you need information on where the huntsman plans to draw and what is the best way for you to go.  If the Master or Field Master is expecting you to leave, he can very easily advise you or send someone to you with a message.

And nowadays there are always people who need to go in early.  I don't know if foxhunters all used to have a string of horses or if their horses had better feet or better shoeing or if trails were better cleared or just what has changed.  It's not at all uncommon for a horse to pull a shoe.  If that rider only has that one horse, he doesn't want to risk the horse getting a bruise or tearing up its foot to the point where it won't hold a shoe.  He has to go in early.  I suppose it's possible that our fields are bigger nowadays which increases the odds of someone losing a shoe.

On a long day, riders who are not fit or those with horses that are not fit will want to come in early.  Since everyone has many demands on his time, many people are riding horses which are not as fit as they should be.  This becomes even more of a problem in hilly country, on hot and/or humid days, and in poor footing.  Again, more people seem to be more inclined to protect their horses.  A general change in our attitudes to animals is part of it but it also ties in with people having less time to ride.  Many people don't ride often, don't ride for long, and don't ride much outside a ring.  Consequently, those people simply don't ride as well as they might.  Those people can't hunt just any horse.  They're probably completely justified in being protective of any horse they can hunt successfully.

In any case, it's not unusual for someone to have a good reason to leave early.  Ok, long enough!  And that's only one minor point.  More to come.

Showing up

This is a rather long excerpt from Foxhunting in North America by Alexander Mackay-Smith, one of the best books on foxhunting in existence.  If you can only own one book, this would be it.  Unfortunately it's not a particularly fun read but it is absolutely packed with information.  A little of it is outdated but that also gives an insight into the traditions of the sport.  Lots of people claim that a variety of things are done in a particular way because it's a tradition.  There's nothing like old books to show the truth of their claims, or the lack.  None of which has anything to do with this passage.

The Morning of the Meet

When you wake up on a hunting morning the weather may appear to be too hot or too cold, too rainy or windy.  Remember, however, that good sport cannot be expected every day.  It is a mistake to believe that there will be a fox in every covert, that there will always be a holding scent, that hounds will invariably have a brilliant forty minute burst in the morning and a steady hunt of an hour and a half in the afternoon.  Without such expectations you will enjoy all the more the occasional great days.  
Should you hunt or should you stay at home?  The Master will answer this question for you.  Don't try to outguess him.  He wants to show you sport just as much as you want to enjoy it -- probably even more.  Your fixture card will probably include a telephone number to call in case of doubt.  If the Master decides to take hounds out, take yourself and your horse to the meet and enjoy the hunting day.
The hounds, the Master, the huntsman, the whippers-in are anxious to provide you with the very best sport which conditions on this particular day make possible -- they work hard the other 364 days of the year to this end and for your benefit.
Give them the opportunity to do so.  Scent, which may be poor at the beginning of the day, can soon change for the better.  If, after an hour or so, you go to the Master or Field Master and ask permission to leave this is a type of rudeness which only very special circumstances can justify and explain.
There is nothing about foxhunting that is certain except its uncertainty.  It is only the uncertainty of the sport, the knowledge that anything may turn up, that brings hounds and staff and followers out to meet fixtures on days when the possibilities of sport seem practically nil.  Often the results are just that.  But from time to time come those memorable days when the fair weather foxhunters decided that nothing could be done and stayed at home, only to be confronted that night by the triumphant regulars with tales of mighty deeds across country.

There is a lot here to think about and (of course) comment upon.  This is long enough that I'll put my comments in another post and close comments on this one.  (There's no sense in all of us pointing out the same obvious changes -- but what would you say about this passage?)  But do notice the use of the term meet fixtures in the last paragraph.  Isn't that interesting?

End of season for horses

There is quite a lot of literature about training horses in general and a surprising amount about training horses for foxhunting in particular.  Generally, at the end of the season a short vacation is appropriate.  It depends on how much the horse has been hunting and on the turnout situation.  If the horse has plenty of turnout, two weeks to a month off will help him quite a lot.  If turnout is limited, the horse needs considerable exercise, gradually tapering down to a reasonable level, in order to stay sane.  Of course, those are just generalities.  Everything depends on the individual horse.

Every rider should have some kind of plan for the off-season.  Start with your goal and work backwards.  If you know that you need to emphasize fitness with your horse, start with the date when cub hunting season starts and mark off the necessary time to achieve an adequate level of fitness.  Although you'll emphasize conditioning during that time, the education of the horse and rider won't be completely ignored.

Similarly, whether you decide you need to work on your riding, or your horse's flatwork, or your horse's jumping, during that time the conditioning program won't be ignored.  The goals of fitness and education (of both horse and rider) and the strategies to meet those goals should be integrated.

Some people advocate lots of ring work for the off season.  I believe Norman Fine is quoting Liz MdKnight here in the column It's About Horses . . .  from Covertside (July 2005).

What are the basic elements of your training program?

Most horses I really take my time with.  We do the cavalettis and combinations.  I start small and try not to over-face them.  For a year or so I have someone else take them out [hunting] and go easy in the back.  I've had some horses that can handle it right away.  We'll let them go on a little bit, and then we'll back off.  Go on, then back off.  But it's probably better to take the time.

And some people advocate mixing up the work.  Probably, like everything else, this depends on the horse and rider.  Certainly the horse must do enough ring work to be under control.  Once that level is achieved, the horse must be exposed to work outside the ring and to groups of horses.   Paul Striberry wrote several articles for Covertside and his advice is very sensible.

Your horse will benefit from alternating ring work with interval-training through the woods.  Try to include trot sets on hills and long gallops around large fields (in both directions).  Cross country schooling keeps the horse fresh and develops the strength and stamina he requires for a day's hunting.
. . .
Whenever possible ride him out with several other horses, and let him jump some hunt fences.  Take turns leading and following.  The goal is to keep him steady when the others are moving on and to let him become familiar with natural obstacles.  Cantering and jumping quietly in a group is a must for any successful field hunter.

The important thing is to create a plan or a schedule and keep your goals in mind.  Get help if you need it.  Recruit a partner if it will help you get things done.  Yes, riding is supposed to be fun and generally relaxing but for many people it's challenging.  The challenges must be faced outside the hunt field or disaster is sure to await.

But it's also important to find a balance in your horse's program.  The horse should not be constantly challenged.  And most riders have many other demands on their time and attention and don't want their riding time to always be challenging.  Mix it up but keep track of things.  It's easy to slip into nothing but easy rides.  Or to end up drilling your horse a lot more than you realize.  Recording your work in black and white is the best way to stay aware of what you're doing and how it fits into an organized program.

For some people, it's easiest to work in 3 or 4 day rotations:  2 days of ringwork, 1 day of trail work, and a day off.  Or plan your schedule around your hunt's weekly trail rides.  Or plan a group jumping school with a few friends once a week.  For many people, having that scheduled appointment, even if it's informal, is a great aid to commitment.

End of season for hounds

This is one of those things that you seldom see mentioned in the literature but the end of the hunting season marks substantial changes for a pack of hounds.  January and February are typically some of the best hunting of the year.  Depending on the weather, that can continue into March.  Which means that at the end of the season you've got a pack of very fit, very "ready" hounds.  They're tuned up, both physically and mentally.

Yes, some of the hounds, particularly the older ones, will be showing signs of overwork.  They may simply be tired, they may be somewhat sore all over, some are lame, some are thin.  But hounds are resilient.  Given a solid week without hunting, most of them would be ready to go.  And that's a problem -- nowhere to go.

No matter how your kennels are designed, no matter what your exercise routine is, those hounds are going to be bursting with energy and feeling good.  The result may simply be excessive barking in the kennels.  It may mean injuries due to rough playing.  Or it may mean some fighting.

And the fighting is likely to be on the increase because the bitches are coming in season.  Where as most pet canines are neutered, most foxhounds in a hunt kennel are not.  That's not because neutering would alter their hunting ability although you'll probably hear that opinion given on occasion.  It's a simple matter of economics.  Most hunts could not afford to neuter hounds routinely.

To be honest, most huntsmen want to keep alive the possibility of breeding any particular bloodline or any particular hound.  Some hounds are late-bloomers.  Some do not shine until their elders leave a gap in the pack and then they'll step up and fill a void.  Some hounds are not stars at all but as good, honest, middle of the pack hounds they may be the last or best representatives of a particular bloodline.  The selection of  particular hounds for breeding is a whole other topic.

So, you've got these super-fit athletes getting their workload cut down to nothing.  How can you ease that transition?  Obviously, give them as much exercise as possible.  Cut their feed!  Reducing the quality of the feed as well as the quantity can help.  If a few need more feed, they'll have to be handled separately.  And every possible variation on kennel arrangements is usually tried out.  It seems that every huntsman favors a certain plan and will do his best to give it a try.  One hopes that the huntsman will be open-minded when a scheme fails but that's not always the case.

Fighting will happen.  And it's difficult in most kennels to figure out which hounds are responsible.  Sometimes a bully is obvious.  Sometimes a particular hound will really and truly ask for it -- when the victim is moved, the bully disappears.  While it's tricky to figure this out it really must be addressed and it should be a factor in selecting hounds for breeding.

It may even be a factor in choosing which breed of hounds a hunt keeps.  Right now, PennMaryDels have a reputation as having easy temperaments and being easy to keep.  And right now economics dictate that most kennels have less working help every year.  So, the PennMaryDel is increasing in popularity.

Well, that's a bit off the subject of the closing of the hunting season but it's all related.

Closing meet

The end of the hunting season is a bittersweet time producing mixed feelings.  We love our hunting and hate to see it end.  But it does take a lot of time and most of us have many things to do that we've been putting off "until after hunting season."

At most hunts, whether the end of the season is specially recognized or not, some kind of celebration takes place.  It may simply be a longer tailgate than usual.  After all, the days are getting longer and there's no rush to hurry home to get chores done before dark.

Some hunts have a real party to celebrate the end of the season.  Belle Meade Hunt puts on such a party, as described by Norman Fine in the July 2006 issue of Covertside (Biennial Staff Seminar 2006).

At Belle Meade it is the responsibility of the Masters to set a sporting example, said Epp Wilson.  . . .  At the end of the season they hold an awards night ceremony to give recognition, prizes and awards to as many individuals as possible.

The recognition and awards referred to may include the awarding of the hunt button or colors.  In another article, The Bear Creek Hounds Are in High Cotton (Covertside, July 2005), Fine describes another end of year party.

Dinner this night was the prelude to the last hunt of the season, a most successful season, and after-dinner speeches were in order.
Barry [MFH] spoke of the many wonderful new friends they had made among the farmer-landowners in Dooly County. . . .
Guy Cooper [professional huntsman] then gave a brief review of the season, proudly recalling the first coyote accounted for by the pack.  He had taken twenty-two and one half couples of hounds out and twenty-two couples were there at the end of the run -- quite an achievement."

And some hunts schedule their annual ball for the end of the season.  Every hunt is similar but every one is different.  Still, the end of the season is generally marked as an important day in some way.  And everyone should be making plans for the "off-season."  More to come on that topic.

Leave your dog at home

Most foxhunters are horse loving, dog loving, kind folks, who love to share their animals' antics with everyone.  I love my dogs and am immensely amused by them.  But I don't bring them to meets. 

There are several reasons I leave my beloved dogs at home.  I don't appreciate loose dogs running around and under horses tied to trailers.  Yes, these are hunt horses that should not mind dogs.  But a busy dog suddenly appearing around the corner of the trailer can spook many horses.  And a busy dog being merrily chased by another busy dog can really get annoying.  Loose dogs can lead to a dogfight, and that can escalate to all kinds of havoc.  Loose dogs, especially those nice males, will often urine mark objects, including buckets, hay nets, tack laying on the ground, boots, table-legs- the list goes on.  Some busy dogs pester for attention, jumping on clean breeches or dropping objects on clean boots to initiate a game of fetch.  Fetch can get out of hand and spook horses.

Besides annoying behavior, there are some health risks that visiting dogs may pose for the business partners of the hunt, the hounds.  Some contagious diseases exist that are easily transmitted between dogs.  Risking putting the hunt out of business for an interval to allow a respiratory virus to go through the pack is reckless.  And unnecessary.

So, while I love my dogs, I doubt if you'll see them at a meet.  You are welcome to come to my house to be amused by my dogs, who are of course the cutest dogs in the universe.  But I'll not bring them and turn them loose at a meet.  Your horse might step on them.

Stocks, an opinion (or three)

Carroll and Beaufort both mention staff wearing their stock pins vertically.  And Carroll mentions that there is an alternate way to present the ends of the tie, using multiple safety pins.  Carroll mentions that this method is an effort to avoid the gap at either side of the tie.  Nonsense!  It is a modern attempt to be "different" and serves no earthly purpose at all.  One certainly finds no mention of such a thing in any book prior to 1960.  It is possible that hunt servants began wearing their stock pins vertically prior to that time but the whole bib-style of tying the tie is very modern.

Even with everyone tying his tie in the same manner, you will get plenty of variation.  My preference is to flatten the knot as much as possible, generally by tugging the upper layer into a wider shape, and then simply folding the ends across the chest.  I was originally taught to pull the ends upward prior to folding them down, creating substantial "ears" that hid a lot of the knot.  My current opinion is that it's unnecessary.  Some slight upward tug is helpful but there should be no effort to push the fold ridiculously high.

All of these manipulations are greatly simplified by having a proper shirt which fits correctly.  The collar needs to be fairly tall and fairly snug.  If the collar is skimpy, your tie will ride up above the shirt leaving a hideously unsightly gap.  The only way to remedy that is an army of safety pins.  Life is too short for that, and on a hot day the struggle to remove the tie may end in torn fabric.

It may be heresy but sometimes a good fitting shirt with a normal collar t is the answer.  If your neck is fairly long, simply turn the collar up, allow the ends of the collar to overlap, and put the tie over that.  You'd be amazed how well everything stays in place with minimal pinning.

Your tie should be long enough.  The general rule of thumb is that it should be as long as you are tall.  In the past ties were labeled for men, women, and children and were suitably sized in both length and width.  That's virtually unheard of any longer.  Slightly longer is advantageous.  If your tie is long enough to tuck into your belt, the ends won't come flapping out.

Unfortunately one generally must buy a tie based on its width.  If you have a short neck, you really do need a narrow tie.  If you're fairly tall, you should probably buy the widest tie you can find and hope that its extra width is matched by some extra length.

Four-fold ties are the answer to all of these problems.  They're really quite simple to make and you can generally find someone to make one in a special size if you need that.  Whether custom-made or ready-made, look for a fabric that's fairly thin but has some body.  In spite of what you might think, nothing is more difficult to tie than a limp rag.

Silk ties are lovely and they really do need to be pouffy; not flat like the cotton ties.  Nothing looks better than a well-tied silk tie but nothing is more difficult to accomplish.  Silk tends to be awfully slick.  Pin it well and hope for the best.

If you buy the ready-made tie with the slot in the back, you want to look for a firmer fabric.  Since these ties require much less manipulation and won't be folded into multiple layers, they need to be fairly stiff to begin with.

Now, everyone writes about the properly-tied stock protecting the neck in case of accident.  I'm not so certain of that.  And you definitely don't want to wear your stock so stiff and so tight and so high that it is bothersome.  Foxhunting is a sport, after all, and you must be able to move.  However, on a cold day that high, tight stock will keep you warmer.  On a warm day, you definitely want to allow a little ease in your tie.  A little air flow around the neck is very comforting on a hot day.

I'll end on one more selection from Carroll, this time about stock pins.  Every book about hunting specifies a plain gold safety pin, except the really old books written by women.  When the hunting uniform was a slight variation on everyday dress, the variation in jewelry was an understandable temptation.  Nowadays the requirements are pretty strict.  Every hunt will specify a plain gold safety pin.  And here's Carrol from his book, Diary of a Fox-hunting Man, with his take on the subject.

Gift tie-pins are a bit of a problem. Those given as Christmas presents often carry ornamental foxes' heads, horses' heads, coiled hunting whips, horseshoes and the equestrian like. This is a great pity and a source of embarrassment, because such embellishments are not approved of in the hunting world.

If the donor compounds the inadvertent blunder by going to the Boxing Day Meet to witness you wearing the pin, then you're really in a spot. Better wear the florid thing just that once and contrive, somehow, to mislay it. Because it just won't do. Members of the Boxing Day field would obviously not comment on an inappropriate tie-pin, unless in sympathetic jest. In truth, they would probably not even notice it, the hangover incidence being fairly high on this annual occasion, and tie-pins being fairly small.

I must admit that many of these pins are very appealing but they simply aren't correct.  Will someone get sent home over this kind of breach?  No.  Will the wearer of such a pin get admonished?  It's possible.  While you may think it's not important and you like the pin and it makes you stand out in the crowd, most foxhunters don't see it that way at all.  It rather makes you look like an amateur who doesn't know any better or someone who chooses to do the wrong thing for no good reason.  If it's one person in a hunt field it's not an issue.  But if everyone starts doing it, it becomes a problem.  And invariably someone is going to lose an important piece of jewelry and create a fuss.  UGH!