Bella’s Story

It was New Years Eve 2016 when Bella was abandoned on a country roadside. Fireworks crackled across a dark and chilled sky as she stood frozen in fear, waiting for her owners to return. However, they had already gone, heading to their warm homes and firesides, casually leaving Bella alone to her fate.

We are sadly used to hearing stories like Bella’s around New Year, what we might be less used to hearing though, is her background. Bella was a young foxhound: abandoned, exhausted, hungry and lonely.

Headlights flashed around the bend of the lane; suddenly a rough looking van pulled up in front of the terrified abandoned hound. Out of the van stepped several soft voiced figures, who reached down to Bella and comforted her. Moments later she was taken into the warmth and given food and care, (in the form of Linda McCartney sausage rolls!)

The chances of a poor abandoned dog being found and collected on a dark night seem vanishingly small, however Bella the foxhound had the fortune to be found by a group of hunt saboteurs. They knew that the prospects for a young hound who strayed from the pack were not good. This was no doubt a hound who did not follow the sound of the horn, did not run with the pack and had likely caused trouble and delay packing up for the day. The most likely “treatment” for Bella if she ever found her way back to the hunt, would be bullet to the head.

With no micro-chip or other identifying features found, she was taken into care with a young hunt sab in an existing multi dog household, as a pack animal a foxhound would have struggled to adapt to life as a solitary dog. She was taken to a friendly and willing vet for spaying and health checking. She was unbelievably underweight, with all of her ribs showing, and even though the vet estimated her age at around two years old, she already bore the scars of barbed wire and thorns on her face.

Bella quickly became a relaxed house hound, happily gaining a little weight after her hunt upbringing. Every meal however, for the rest of her life she would ravenously devour as though it would shortly be taken from her, a glimpse into the competitive early life in kennels, where hounds feed en masse and will fight each other over resources.

Sadly, Bella was always suspicious of men, and carried a mortal fear of brooms, mops or anything else resembling a large stick, so much so that she would not walk through a door where a broom stood and ran away whenever a mop was shown. This gives us a sad insight into what life must have been like at the hunt kennels. Furthermore, she never got over her fear of fireworks, which must have sounded dangerously similar to the crack of the huntsman’s whip.

As she was adopted by her hunt sab home at an early age, Bella spent many years welcoming new faces into her multi dog family. While she began as the scared new hound, being shown how to play with toys by others, in later years she became an older auntie, playing with young pups and running around the garden and nearby fields trying to keep up with the fresher legs.

One day, while out on a group walk with her family, a fox ran across the path in front of several keen noses. Bella took no interest at all, preferring to stick close and continue her walk. Looking back, her lack of interest in her red-tailed cousins was maybe part of the reason for straying from the pack. It was clear she would not have had a long future with the hunt.

As the years passed, Bella sported a greying and later completely white muzzle. Her legs slowed and voice quietened, but she never forgot to always keep one eye open for unguarded food. Anything that was not guarded, would be fair game for theft! Sandwiches, biscuits, even a bag of “brand name” doughnuts fresh from the shops once fell victim to her voracious appetite!

Bella’s twilight years were spent mainly snoozing, but when the last days came at an age of around 11 years old, she was quietly and peacefully allowed to sleep, by a vet – rather than facing the fate that came to the majority of her litter siblings, cousins and ancestors with the gun of the huntsman behind the kennels.

Bella leaves behind the lesson that foxhounds are simply dogs that need a loving home. She lived the long and happy life that would have been denied to her had she not strayed from the pack almost a decade ago. Thousands of hounds, just like Bella, live a short and hard life in service of the hunt.

Hunting apologists lament over the fate of their hounds when their sport is finally consigned to history, but the reality is that these dogs are their responsibility. Each one is an individual that deserves a home and care. Bella had the life that many tens of thousands of hounds in this country are denied – safety, warmth and a bed, and she leaves behind an empty bed and a family who miss her, which is more than can be said than for the hunters who left her by the roadside in the dark many years ago.