2006 CANADIAN NATIONAL BEAGLE LARGE PACK HARE TRIAL Oct. 28 & 29, 2006 - Fundy Trial BC, St. John, NB, Canada

Before I begin the write-up on this event, I want to share with you a word. Dedication. If I came away from this event with nothing else, if I could only use one word to describe the CDN National Beagle LPH trial, it would be “dedication”.  Here we have a major event in its fifth year, created and organized on the grass roots level - originally by a small group of beaglers and independent of the Canadian Kennel Club. They did this on their own. It is attended by the Who’s Who in the sport of Large Pack beagling, and in its short, 5-year history, has national sponsors, Regional Awards, the Purina Top Ten awards, and its own Large Pack Hall of Fame. An event of this magnitude, the caliber of dogs that compete, and the distances some of these beaglers travel (from both sides of the Canadian/United States of America border) to put their best on the ground, can only be achieved by a pure demonstration of dedication to the sport.

It was a 12-hour drive for me and Dan Kane from our point of departure in eastern Ontario to our destination, Fundy Trail Beagle Club in St. John, New Brunswick, Canada. Some folks traveled even farther to attend, but the beaglers who came down from Newfoundland… honestly, I’ve never seen anything up to what they have to do to run their dogs with ours. For the sake of abbreviation, I will refer to these amazing beaglers as the “Newfies”, a name coined by American troops stationed on the somewhat remote, northern island of Newfoundland during World War II.

Courtesy of Mapquest.com

The Newfies arrived about a half hour before us on Thursday evening. I’ll throw a few names out there for you; Gary Rumsey, David Chafe, Bud Constantine, and Steve Rumsey. I’ve included a map of some of the routes taken by beaglers attending this trial. If you don’t know where these places are, or you’ve never made the trip, it won’t mean as much to you until you see it on a map. To get to this trial, the Newfies make a 12 to 14-hour drive across their island Province to catch a ferry that will carry them and their van, loaded with dogs and belongings to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. This begins a 6 to 8-hour ride on the water, and they are at the mercy of the weather, so they begin their trek a day early to allow for delays. After they dock at Cape Breton, they have another 6 to 8-hour drive across Nova Scotia and down to St. John, New Brunswick. For those unable to make the trip, their dogs are brought and handled by those who can go. A round trip accounting for these guys amounts to a minimum of 40 hours on the road and 12 hours at sea. By the time this dance is over, the Newfies and their hounds will have traveled a difficult 1800 miles on land and 192 nautical miles by sea. This is a tough bunch of die-hard beaglers, but what gentlemen they are; I never heard one complaint. They were happy to be there, they support this trial every year, and they bring some stiff competition along in those dog crates. Here’s a big KUDOS to the beaglers of Newfoundland!

The Newfie dogs arrived first.

New Brunswick landscape.

Over the course of our 720-mile one-way drive, I watched the landscape change from the granite hills scattered with colorful maples, oaks, and pines of Lansdowne in eastern Ontario, across the flatter “Indiana farm-looking” lands of Quebec, to the rugged, evergreen-laced hills of New Brunswick. On every horizon, the hills take on a purple hue, and the dense forest of pines and spruces jut straight up out of rocky ground. Along much of this stretch, the New Brunswick main highway, there is a tall fence with cattle chute type gates that steer and divert the local moose population away from the highway.

(Click on certain pics to see some full-sized versions of interest.Wave your mouse over them to see which ones are linked.)

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