Running Dogs in Tank Suits

Spectators braving a light drizzle.

The wife and I got up to the American Sighthound Field Association's International Invitational at Morven Park just as the rain started to really come down, so we looped up to the mansion for a private showing of what little is available to see at the Museum of Hounds and Hunting while the big mansion is undergoing a major rehabilation.

Apparently the enormous old mansion was built in about 30 different pieces (and without a real foundation!) and has gone through more facelifts than the Gabor sisters. They are doing it up right this time, however, and in about a year and a half it should be spectacular.

The ground at Morven Park, like the grounds at Oatlands just up the road (where they will be holding the sheep dog trials in October) is expansive and well maintained, and at Morven Park they also include a major veterinary hospital and rehabilitation center for horses.

And this is Horse and Hound country -- the movie theatre in Leesburg is called the "Talley Ho," which should give you some idea.


A pair of whippets in their racing colors wait for a chance to run.


Setting up for lure coursing.


And they're off!


The ASFA trail had lots of fast Whippets, Greyhounds and Salukis, and the occassional Sloughi, Borzoi, and Azawakh thrown in. I only saw one Wolfhound and no Deerhounds, but I think a lot of dogs were jungled up in crates due to the rain.

I was rather suprised to see quite a few Pharaoh Hounds and Ibizan Hounds, which I do not really count as sighthounds (they are more general hunters than running dogs in my opinion), and a Rhodesian Ridgeback which can only be called a sighthound if you ignore the fact that they are not very fast runners at all.

I also saw quite a few dogs that left me stumped as to their breed until I got home and discovered there is a wire-haired version of the Ibizan Hound. I had no idea, as I have only seen the smooth ones up to now. I had thought they might be the large versions of Portugese Podengos, but I did not think there were very many Podengos in the U.S.

I stopped by the Shot on Site mobile home and office, and met Margaret briefly, but she was in the middle of doing photography business (great shots of Salukis!) and said Dan was up shooting the Whippets, which was where I was headed, but I never saw anyone with a camera, and so we missed each other.

The wife enjoyed the whippets a lot, and I could see her mind whirling as she is trying to figure out what the next dog is going to be (after Trooper goes to the Big Hunt in the Sky).



We headed off to Leesburg after a few hours only to discover that out favorite coffee place in that town is still there, but that the massive old German antique coffee roaster is not.

What happened, I joked, did it set the building on fire?

Well yes, actually it did. The half of the building I was looking at was a replacement.

My joke was not quite a guess -- I could see the problem last time I was there -- a big iron 19th Century roaster without any of that silly OSHA safety stuff, a weak wooden floor, a wooden building, tremendous heat and open flame in the roaster, and beans so smoking hot they would set newspaper print on fire dumped when into an open cooling tray. It was an accident waiting to happen.

The good news is that the old German roaster is still in business up the road a ways, in a building with brick walls, a concrete floor and a fire-proof roof. There's nothing to burn so things are pretty safe.

We rolled up to Lucketts to visit the strange antique place up there, and we ended up picking up a pretty nice coffee table for my son ($29) who will be setting up in his own apartment soon, and a small chair ($19) and a small white table for the wife's paints ($39).

As always I saw a few things I liked but did not get, such as a taxidermy groundhog in bride regalia (pictured above right) and an enormous old cowl from a long-gone passenger ship (pictured above left).




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