No life
Terrier terror
Jeremy Clarke
0 ur late chairman's favourite terrier was an all-white Jack Russell he used for badger digging. He always spoke fondly of Nelson, describing him as a 'hard' dog. By this I think he meant that Nelson preferred to fight his badgers rather than simply to stand back and bay at them.
Are you sure you're not wearing too much make-up tonight, darling?' Almost every terrier man I've ever met has claimed to own a 'hard' dog, but in reality few terriers will face a badger underground. Not many will tackle an adult fox either. I once saw an otherwise game terrier of mine back down from a weasel. Whenever anyone boasted to our chairman that he owned a 'hard' dog, our chairman would first of all enquire whether or not the dog in question killed cats. All 'hard' terriers, in his experience, will kill cats as a hobby given the chance. Nelson, for example, once killed three in under two minutes. Anything short of a long-suffering roll of the eyes or a guilty grin from the owner, and he would be dis- missed as a braggart.
Nelson's son was a 'hard' dog too, until his testicles were bitten off by a badger that came round behind him, and he bled to death. And then, of course, badger digging became illegal, and Nelson was suddenly out of a job. Badger digging still goes on round here, but the prospect of a £2,000 fine for so much as looking at a badger sett, has put a lot of people off. Badgers have subsequently proliferated to the extent that there are local dairy farmers with more badgers on their farms than cattle.
At the dog and ferret shows that we hold every summer in our chairman's picture- postcard field, we occasionally see terriers being shown that have been worked on badgers. You can easily tell which ones. Terriers that have been sent underground after foxes — we see plenty of those — are often lightly scarred around the muzzle. Those that have been sparring with bad- gers, however, will be heavily scarred underneath the jaw, or may even have part of the jaw missing — for 'piggy' has the wit to make a feint then grab an adversary by the throat.
Our chairman also kept lurchers. When he and I went ferreting, he always brought along a beautiful jet-black lurcher bitch to catch any rabbits that slipped through the net. This lurcher was the most obedient and hard-working animal I ever had the pleasure of spending an afternoon with. It can be a tedious business, ferreting, espe- cially when the rabbits refuse to bolt. The attention wanders. But this cheerful black bitch gave the business her undivided attention from start to finish and never missed a rabbit. She'd not only catch them, she'd bring them back alive and unharmed and allow our chairman to take them from her mouth. Our chairman, a big man with huge hands and a cruel face that reminded me of the actor Donald Pleasance, pre- ferred to break a rabbit's neck by stretching the rabbit around the back of his waist, as if he were strapping on a belt. It was a method I'd not seen before. He'd broken so many rabbits' necks in his life, he tossed the limp corpses away complacently with- out looking to see where they fell.
At our summer dog and ferret shows, our chairman was more or less confined to the information desk and tannoy. For some reason, I am the committee member always allocated the risky job of ferret steward. About halfway through the after- noon of the last show our chairman came stooping into the ferret judging tent, sidled up to me and said, 'What class are you on? I want to do the draw in a minute.' (We normally stop the judging while the raffle is drawn, so that everyone can give it their full attention.) `Best coloured hob, Mr Chairman,' I said.
`Fucking arseholes!' he exclaimed. 'Is that all?' And then he ducked out of the tent again. It was one of the last things I heard him say.
When he first became seriously ill, we laughed at him. 'Live by the sword, die by sword,' we jeered. Or, 'It's about time you were knocked on the head.'
`I'm not ready to die yet, be buggered,' he'd answer back with unwonted serious- ness. For two years his doctors tried every- thing to cure him of his mysterious illness, including a course of what he described as `aqua-puncture' — but all failed, And at this summer's shows he was sometimes speechless with pain, though he never moaned to anyone about it.
In a way Mr Allen was our dog and fer- ret club. He'd started it 20 years ago, and he and Joan put their life and soul into it. He soldiered on as chairman of the club throughout his illness, but at the Septem- ber committee meeting, our last of the sea- son, he gloomily offered his resignation on the grounds of ill health. It was accepted with reluctance. Four days later he died.
How I miss him already.
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