Bert Gripton's Dogs & Techniques

This post recycled from November 2004.

Bert Gripton is one of the few legendary terriermen who was not known for breeding dogs, but for working them. He had a small pack of working terriers and whippets, and was terrierman to the Albrighton Foxhounds. His father was a gamekeeper on the Aqualate estate in  Staffordshire near the Shropshire border.

Gripton was a die-hard digger who specialized in badger, but he also hunted otter (he took the last legal otter in the UK), and fox. Phil Drabble, author Of Pedigree Unknown, from which the above picture is lifted, said that Gripton "could, and did, catch Fox with greater certainty than the hounds."

Bert Gripton appears to have kept a pack of very small dogs. This is not surprising -- the more people dig, the more they seem to value a small dog able to get up to the quarry and to manuever around and with it. Brian Nuttal notes of Gripton's terriers: "No one called them Jack Russells in those days, just white hunt terriers."

Phil Drabble explained Gripton's technique for removing a fox:

"Quite often it was the fox's grinning mask which came into view, in which case there is an effective trick that requires supreme confidence and dexterity approaching sleight of hand. Hold a bit of stick, as thick as your thumb, and about a foot long, and wave it rapidly across the fox's mask, within reach of his jaws. The reaction is reflex and certain. He bites the stick in a vice-like grip. That is the exact split second when it is safe to shoot out the other hand to grab him by the scruff of the neck. It takes more cool nerve that I possess, but it was one of Bert Gripton's star performances."

Phil Drabble Goes to the Big Woods in the Sky

Thanks to the Querencia blog, I learned that Phil Drabble, age 93, has gone to the Big Field and Forest in the Sky. His obituary in The Guardian is a nice read. They refer to him as a "militant naturalist who loved the countryside long before BBC2 made him the 'star' of One Man and His Dog, in which he succeeded in drawing a television audience of six million for a series of sheepdog trials."

"Militant Naturalist." I rather like that! More please.

The obit goes on: "He was distinctly not a man to cross, neither before nor after he learned how publicity could help fight his battles against what he called 'green welly wallies', 'smart-arsed industrial consultants who are the parasites of a get-rich-quick society', 'agri-chemical fat cats', 'parish pump politicians' and 'petty bureaucrats', who all in their way - in his view - spoiled the purity of the countryside to which all decent Englishmen aspired."

Oh geez, that's good. Be sure to read the rest, and the other in The Telegraph as well. Drabble wrote his first article for The Field about Staffordshire bull terriers, and his slim book "Of Pedigree Unknown" is a good read about dogs, with a few pictures and stories about the great terrierman Bert Gripton. May they both meet up with each other, and the dogs, on the other side.

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