‘She’s a strange one, isn’t she?’ said Long John the spaniel trainer as he put Cydney through her paces. We were in the enclosure in the field behind his house, where he had decided to train Cydney behind ten-foot-high fencing because the last time we went for a lesson we had a bit of a disaster in the pheasant wood.
On that occasion, he asked whether she was alright off the lead and I summed up her current state of obedience by saying, ‘Yes, most of the time, she just goes a bit funny at the end of a walk,’ when really I should have said, ‘No, absolutely not, she’s an unguided missile, totally mental.’ But I had not wanted Long John to think badly of me.
Long John is Cydney’s birth father, by which I mean he bred her. I bought her off him when she was eight weeks old, the last left in a litter of six pups out of two of his best gun dogs.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in