The son of a fast dog wins big at Westminster
By Christie Keith
February 9, 2009
We’ve been talking a lot lately about dogs being bred for function instead of winning in the show ring. But even when you want to breed for function, the work of some dog breeds has become an anachronism. None of us can test our Scottish Deerhounds on their ancestral quarry, the Highland Stag, a deer similar in size to an elk.
But there are many different performance events at which breeders can test their hound’s instincts and abilities, and in Scottish Deerhounds there is one dog who excelled almost incomprehensibly at them all: Rory.
Rory’s full name was BII NFC DC Chartwell Silver Run Valevue SGRC, ORC, LCM 6, VC. He was bred and owned by Ellen Bonacarti of Chartwell Scottish Deerhounds, and Norma Sellers of Vale Vue.
And all those initials? From Ellen Bonacarti’s website:
[Rory was] the first AKC National Lure Coursing Champion in 1994; the 1995 ASFA Best in International Invitational; the first NOTRA Oval Race Champion Deerhound; the first LGRA Gazehound Racing Champion Deerhound and the first ASFA Lure Courser of Merit 4, Lure Courser of Merit 5 and Lure Courser of Merit 6 Deerhound. He was the #2 ASFA Deerhound in 1994, 1995 and 1996 and the #1 ASFA Deerhound in 1997 and 1998; he is also currently the #1 lifetime ASFA Deerhound with over 600 Bowen points (dogs defeated). Rory was the #1 LGRA Deerhound in 1999 and #4 ASFA Deerhound. Rory was also the #1 NOTRA Deerhound in 1994 and 1995, making him one of the rare hounds to have been #1 in three different venues.
In 2000, Rory repeated as the #1 LGRA Deerhound and earned the Deerhound Sporting Club’s “Fairchild Perpetual Award for Excellence in Racing.” He tied for 6th in the ASFA Top Ten, his 7th straight year in the Top Ten.
I loved this dog back when he was a youngster, and wanted to breed my bitch Rosie to him. But I was young and stupid, and was worried that both sides of that pedigree had some really bad tails — a fault I now couldn’t possibly care less about. And it’s too bad, too, because not only did Rory live past the age of 11, he was literally the runningest dog ever in our breed, as well as being a show champion — yes, he really was — and Rosie, herself a show champion, had two incredible running brothers and lived to be 13 and a half years old.
Yes, I do kick myself every day for being stoopid, stoopid, stoopid. What I wouldn’t give now to have bred those two hounds together.
Fortunately, other breeders weren’t such idiots, and Rory sired a few litters.
And today, one of his sons won the breed at Westminster, in something of an upset.
Congratulations to Ch. Gayleward’s Tiger Woods — who is 7 years old — and to his breeder and owner, Gayle Bontecou. And good luck in the Hound Group!
Congratulations also to Ch Altnamara’s Trial By Fire, owned by Linda and Ned Madden, for winning Best of Opposite Sex to Best of Breed, and to Diane Murray’s Ch Lindisfarne Coll Of Gayleward CD RA JC NAJ for winning the only Award of Merit given today.
And here’s to the day that no one has to make a post like this again, because all our conformation winners excel in the field, too.
[UPDATE:] Tiger won the Hound Group! Only the second deerhound since Ch. Fernhill’s Phantom in 1991! And the son of a great field dog!
Here’s a video of Ellen Bonacarti with Rory and a deerhound puppy, on a TV news “meet the breed” segment. She gives a pretty good overview of the breed:
Top photo of Rory at age 11, by Ellen Bonacarti. Bottom photo by Dan Gauss of Shot On Site photography. Both used with permission of Ellen Bonacarti.
I wonder how many Scottish lords chose to give up their lives rather than their Deerhounds (re the Fox news segment). Of course, either way you’re still giving up your Deerhounds…
Comment by Kim Thornton — February 9, 2009 @ 4:40 pm
You actually only had to give up three… the ransom for a nobleman’s life was three deerhounds.
Comment by Christie Keith — February 9, 2009 @ 5:01 pm
He just won the Group!!!!!!!! Woo-hoo!!!!
Comment by Susan — February 9, 2009 @ 6:46 pm
I just updated!!! OMG!
Hmmmm, should I pretend to be all cool about this?
Comment by Christie Keith — February 9, 2009 @ 8:07 pm
Nah.
Comment by Susan Fox — February 9, 2009 @ 8:22 pm
Double nah. Let’s say yay!
And BY THE WAY … I was AT the Garden the last time a DH took group. :)
Comment by Gina Spadafori — February 9, 2009 @ 8:31 pm
I was watching at home with my mom… we were yelling and running around like crazy people, and hugging on our old deerhound, Tim, and he was looking at us like, “What did I do?”
I’ll never forget that night!
I wish that the commentator had known this dog was the son of the greatest performance deerhound in the history of the breed, who was also a show champion!
Comment by Christie Keith — February 9, 2009 @ 8:35 pm
These dogs do have a purpose.
They are used as coursing hounds for foxes, hares/jackrabbits, coyotes, and even Kangaroos. However, the working forms of these dogs are still interbred with other sighthounds and other breeds and exist in the staghound, lurcher, and Kangaroo dog lines.
The Red Deer of Europe is related to the wapiti, but it is quite a bit smaller. I’ve seen old paintings by George Stubbs of hounds swarming stags in a painting called ‘The Grosvenor Hunt.’ William Pierce Stubbs painting a sighthound catching one of these animals.
Comment by retrieverman — February 9, 2009 @ 9:01 pm
Does anyone breed real lurchers in the US? We’ve stayed many times at a B&B in the New Forest in England where lived (until a few years ago) a small blond lurcher named Emily. She was greyhound/deerhound cross. A very interesting dog who chose her friends. My husband and I were among the fortunate.
Comment by Susan Fox — February 9, 2009 @ 9:20 pm
I watched the breed video earlier today, and thought this dog was stunning. Delighted to know he’s a son of the #1 racing deerhound in LGRA, NOTRA and ASFA/AKC. Not every hound likes to compete in all 3 venues, and not all 3 are easily available to participate in without a lot of travel and commitment.
I just might have to go and prevail upon a friend with cable tomorrow night to watch the BIS judging.
Comment by Anne T — February 9, 2009 @ 9:24 pm
There are lurchers and longdogs being bred in the US… in fact, there are many, many sighthound mixes used in various forms of hunting, mostly in the Western and mountain states.
I spent some time with a charming, adorable puppy who was a Deerhound/Borzoi/Greyhound mix who came into rescue from someone breeding for hunting. If she hadn’t already been adopted, and I were able to have another dog, I’d have snapped her up in a hot second.
In the imaginary world in my head, the schism between working and “other” sighthounds would cease to exist and we’d all breed the dogs we love for function and companionship and health.
In the real world, most “show” breeders want nothing to do with hunting breeders, despise them for creating mixes, and — often with justification — deplore the way they treat their dogs. I’ve seen far worse hunting sighthound rescue situations than I’ve ever seen in a show breeder, BUT… part of that is probably because we’ve let the worlds diverge so far.
It’s kind of like East Germany and West Germany. It would be very hard to reunify the sundered world of sighthounds. But I’d like to see it happen.
I don’t believe it will, however.
Comment by Christie Keith — February 9, 2009 @ 9:38 pm
Retrieverman, I never said these dogs don’t have a purpose. I said they can’t be tested on their ancestral quarry. And they can’t be, except under very unusual and often illegal circumstances.
I live in California, where deerhounds are brought into the open field to hunt jackrabbits. Our breed has sent a bitch twice to the Westminster Group ring who was pointed in NOFCA, and who I’d seen take a jackrabbit.
But if you don’t live in the West or mountain states, it’s virtually impossible to test your dog in the open field. I applaud deerhound and other sighthound people who find venues to challenge their hounds anyway — Rory lived in New Jersey. One of his sisters, Wyvis, was a brilliant open field hound here in California. That was an incredible coursing litter — not that surprising, because their dam, Sophie, was a great courser, too.
Comment by Christie Keith — February 9, 2009 @ 9:43 pm
Yeah, you can’t use them on Scottish red deer.
I wonder if breeding them to work smaller game has some effect on developing a different sort of sighthound type from the working landrace sighthounds I mentioned earlier?
I left out a type of sight hound that could have deerhound in it. It’s the longdog, which is a mix of sighthounds.
When hunting deer with hounds was legal in Britain, they preferred to use specially bred scenthounds for that purpose— generally dogs of the foxhound type. I don’t know whether anyone used lurchers or other working landrace sighthounds on deer in the decades just before the hunting (British English for using dogs to kill prey) ban.
Comment by retrieverman — February 9, 2009 @ 9:49 pm
Interesting, Christie. In England, the lurcher is a perfectly well-understood, deliberate cross. But they are created for a purpose, hunting. We also saw lots of them at a country fair at Ullswater in the Lake District in 1989.
That event was also the first time I ever saw a border collie sheep herding trial. Those dogs were something else. All business. I remember one who was (barely) patiently waiting to get out there and you could almost here him critiquing the dog he was watching (who blew it).
I mispoke earlier. Emily was a whippet/deerhound cross, hence her small size.
I really liked the lurchers but recall being informed that they weren’t the best choice for a household with small animals like cats.
Comment by Susan Fox — February 9, 2009 @ 10:02 pm
“Does anyone breed real lurchers in the US?”..
oh yes, and longdogs, too. Our new friend/aquaintance, Zac, a falconer (without a falcon) who just moved to Las Cruces, has a New York bred lurcher that looks exactly like a whippet with a bit of a bushy tail… but she has zero whippet behind her. Weird.
Comment by Dan Gauss — February 9, 2009 @ 10:28 pm
Woot, Woot! How awesome that the winner of the Hound group has an awesome performance ancestry! We’ll be rooting for him. Unless the Dane wins the Working Group. Even then, unless the winning Dane has a performance background - not totally out of the question although unlikely - we may switch sides.
Comment by Barb — February 10, 2009 @ 3:06 am
Lurchers in the U.S.-We have a greyhound blue heeler mix that we rescued from a shelter here in Texas. She is beautiful, very sweet, and looks like a greyhound with blue heeler markings. What little information I’ve been able to find online suggests that she may have been bred to hunt coyotes. Apparently people in our area, usually farmers, breed greyhounds to herding dogs just for this purpose.
When she was found as a stray, she had recently had a litter of puppies, still had milk. I really wish there was some way to find out more about her history.
She was also adopted once and brought back to the shelter for being dangerous with cats, but we worked a lot with her in the beginning and she’s fine with our cat now.
Comment by Eliblu — February 10, 2009 @ 6:24 am