Whippets -- Animals of Sport CH2

CHAPTER II

RACE WITH RABBIT Formerly the whippet was used only for AND RACE IN rabbit coursine, i.e. one nel' employed qu has courre the rabbit. Aujourd harmed the rabbit coursings are much less frequent and the vogue is with the races in straight line, excel sport which impassions the people, in certain regions of England, at this point which one could call the whippet: the greyhound of poor '. However the rabbit coursing did not disappear, far from it.

***The RABBIT the race with rabbit is from time immemorial. We have COURSING quotes a pasturage of the Dictionary of hunting and pesche which explains us how one had fun on our premises, to the xvme century, with releasing “small English greyhounds” in the wild rabbits. The fox terriers were much used and are used still for this sport in England; and from there so much of crossings between greyhounds and burrows of all kinds, by which have endeavoured to increase qualities of each race by those of the other. The whippet is par excellence the dog of the rabbit coursing, and it is only at one rather recent time that one employed it with the races in straight line about which we will speak presently.

i. See an excellent article of Mr. Jacques Lussigny in the famous universal Sport, January 39 iqn.

The race with rabbit is always done in closed ground, and usually in a field of a poor surface; moreover, even in full shift, main Janot would never be likely least to escape its adversaries, infinitely faster than him, if it did not find some burrow where to take refuge.

The payment of this sport is not as complicated as that of the coursing of the greyhounds; it is even of a remarkable simplicity since it holds about in this only principle: gaining each match is that of the two dogs which takes rabbit.

The game is brought out of boxes and the whippets continue it by couples. The rabbit usually receives 55 meters in advance. At the exact moment where one poses it with ground at the fixed point, the slipper coward the two dogs which it retained by the skin of the neck. Very often, the whippets are if vites that the game is taken before to have been able to make only one hook. In the important contests, each handle disputes sometimes in several tests and comprises the continuation of several rabbits, 5 usually; in this case, of the two dogs, gaining it is that which killed three times or more. In the particular matches between two considered runners, the advance granted to game varies like the number of the races; sometimes one makes run to the same dogs to 31 rabbits with five minutes rest between each test: in this case, gaining it is that which gained sixteen times or more the victory.

Because of the difference in size and weight which often the whippets offer, the public tests of rabbit-coursing, in the same way with the remainder as the tests in straight line, are always handicaps. In the Newcastle-one-Tyne, one handicaps the competitors according to their size, measured with the garrot; elsewhere according to their weight; but everywhere, naturally, account also of their quality is taken. The dog which one wants to handicap is released all alone one or more time, of more or less far, on a dead rabbit.

On the whole, the rabbit-coursing is not sporting interest comparable with that of the coursing of the greyhounds, it is necessary some! The game, drawn from its box at the time of the race, is not in a position to defend oneself; as well, the speed of rabbit is too much lower than that of the dogs so that it can fight, and one delivers it in an enclosure where under no circumstances would it find the least refuge. Generally, the test is reduced to a race in straight line on game, invariably followed death of rabbit; and although it does not take place of apitoyer there exaggeratedly on this very harmful animal and that it is necessary well to destroy, it nevertheless is allowed to consider this spectacle unnecessarily sanguinary since one can make run the dogs just as easily, and even better, without charms living. For this reason, in the populeuses regions where flowers today the sport of the whippet - i.e. in the great mining centers of England, like Lancashire, Yorkshire, Durham, Northumberland - the rabbit coursing is generally replaced by races punts, less cruel at the same time and more regular from the point of view of the sport.