WESTPORT – The Fairfield County Hounds’ Thanksgiving Day Hunt, many times followed by a sumptuous hunt breakfast at the original Newtown Inn or the private home of a landowner, was the highlight of most foxhunting seasons.

This rollicking ride was always followed by the formal hunt ball a week later at the Fairfield County Hunt Club in Westport. Since 1923, the FCH foxhound pack and a fine private beagle pack were kenneled at FCHC, before journeying north to Newtown in the late 1960’s. In 1978, I earned my “colors” of the hunt, a rite of passage among hardy foxhunters, at the hunt ball. This was pretty heady stuff for a teenage girl.

Besides watching the hounds work – going to ground, giving tongue, being in full cry and catching a scent … all cool things foxhounds did with a plumb – my favorite part of riding to the hounds was jumping. Jumping stonewalls between the wide-open fields, especially after a long gallop with a big solid wall in shades of gray covered in green lichen, just calling my name.

There was a favorite stonewall fence of mine at the end of the long field on the former Hundred Acres Farm (today its called Foxview Farm). My faithful mount, Spec, and I surely cleared that fence more than 100 times in our foxhunting career. In 1978, I moved to a house my father built on West Farm Ridge Road, and as luck would have it, right down the street from my favorite jump. After Tippy, my faithful canine companion, and I moved in, this jump and field became our private playground.

Many a misty morning Tippy would take off at full speed down the middle of Hundred Acres Road, not slowing til he hit the dirt road at the bend, when he would take a sharp left turn into our bucolic paradise. We had a blast in there; Tippy hunting for smaller vermin than the fox and I pretending we were “beagling.” Tippy, the result of a breeding of a purebred Schipperke and Beagle, actually resembled a black fox with his front paws dipped in white paint. It was his Beagle heritage that came to the fore, during our mock scent hound affairs. When something did get caught in his olfactory membranes, he would loudly bay and his tail would stand erect, very regal beagle like! 

The next year, I left Newtown for college and eventually Tippy and I settled in Southbury. By 1986, all those baying foxhounds and memorable Thanksgiving Day hunts were gone. In the summer of 1991, I left the vet’s office carrying Tippy’s limp, forever sleeping body wrapped in his favorite horse blanket. He was just two months shy of his 18th birthday. After a quick stop to buy a bottle of fine champagne we headed straight to Hundred Acres Farm.

As I sat by the soon-to-be-named Tippy Memorial Jump, I toasted a life well spent, in pursuit of what dogs are meant to be, companions to humans and hunters of vermin or game in exchange for very little, mostly food and an active outlet for that unique quality of unconditional love. After I filled in his final burrow and wiped the earth, tracked over by many a fox, from my hands I said a little prayer for my constant companion. I vowed to return.

As luck would have it, three years earlier I had returned to my old galloping grounds, in the form of hunter pacing with my old foxhunting partner, Spec. That first autumn pace following Tippy’s passing, found Spec and I flying over the jump we all called home. And in that moment of free flight, the love of my dog, the freedom of jumping and the exhilaration of youth would come flooding back into my body, a smile worked its way across a beaming face. 

This Thanksgiving will be different. It’s been four years since I flew over the Tippy Memorial Jump. I went to visit the jump this year for what may be the last time, alone, on foot in the stillness of an autumn morning to capture the memories. Soon, the bark of the bulldozers will replace the baying of the hounds and the thundering hooves. The earthmovers will unearth an empty champagne bottle, surrounded by dust, and a favorite blanket.

This Thanksgiving I am very thankful for my memories.

Lisa Peterson, a long-time breeder of Norwegian Elkhounds, is the Club Communications Manager at the American Kennel Club. Contact her at ask@lisa-peterson.com  or Dogma Publishing, P.O. Box 307, Newtown, CT 06470.