- Location
- Scottish Highlands
I tried to write a post like that a dozen times but ended up deleting the lot. I have hunted hounds and you are spot on. I always put my own dogs down, and horses too. They never know a thing about it and it is over in a split second. I'd rather go through that painful (for me) process than take them to the vet surgery, a place they are instinctively suspicious of.I assume most of the ‘anti’ posters on this thread have never actually met a kennel huntsman? Every one I’ve known treats their hounds almost better than their own family. At the end of their life, those hounds aren’t left to fester, they are pts by the person they know, in an environment they know.
Anyone that knows the slightest bit about foxhounds will appreciate that they are nothing like the gun dog that can live his days out in front of the Aga. They are bred for a job, and they live and breathe it. They certainly aren’t house dogs, and wouldn’t be happy doing anything other than the job they’re bred & trained for.
Incidentally, I was once tasked with taking my girlfriend’s (Lurcher x Collie) dog to visit the kennel huntsman for a similar job. He was to go to the kennels as it was a place he always loved. He died from a single shot, the huntsman having a soft hand under his jaw, and still wagging his tail when he went. It was a far kinder end than a visit to the vets’ would ever have been. And yes, that girlfriend became the current Mrs NeilO, and we still hold the same values.
The local police dog handler called in one day and was almost in tears telling me how he was made to sit in the waiting room behind owners of puppies being "vet checked" and others in for routine vaccinations while his dog, suffering from cancer. had to wait. No, I may be a hard cruel barsteward for having shot and hunted all my life but I would hope to think I could depart this world in the same way, but that's unlikely. My father fortunately died before the medics had the chance to carry out the threat to amputate his legs to prevent death by gangrene. The modern world is not as humane as it pretends to be. A lot is window dressing for human vanity. There is none so blind as he who will not look.