Coursing and Racing Dogs
by Freeman Lloyd
published in the American Kennel Gazette, April 1931
Coursing with cheetahs has not been seen, but
the speed of these animals has been noted by an esteemed friend
in Er. M. Shelley, the well-known American authority on working
and field trial pointers and setters, the man who went with
the late Paul Rainey, of Tippah Lodge, near Cotton Plant, Mississippi,
to East Africa to hunt lion, etc., with American foxhounds,
Airedale and cross-bred Airedale terriers.
Writing about the cheetah - which must be as
fast if not faster than any dog - Mr. Shelley says that on one
day's hunt he had a most interesting experience. He had not
gone far out on the plains before he came across many Thompson's
gazelles. He could see "bunches" of them in every
direction, and in the distance thousands of head of larger game
could be plainly viewed.
As he rode along the gazelle would move to
one side, giving him about two hundred yards of right-of-way
on both sides. As they did so, a large cheetah pounced out of
the grass and took after a gazelle that passed nearest to him.
The spotted beast caught the buck in less than two hundred yards.
Shelley, on a mule, then gave chase to the
cheetah which had made off from the stone-dead gazelle. The
hunter had before galloped down cheetahs on a good horse, so
it would appear that the cheetah is only very speedy for a short
distance. It seems the beast gained on the mule-rider for the
first quarter of a mile, and just held its own the second quarter.
The third quarter the hunter began to gain on the cheetah which
was passed in less than a mile, when the creature squatted on
the ground. Shelley then shot him with his forty-five Colt.
My friend says that unlike lions and leopards, cheetahs are
quite harmless. The methods of training these animals will be
described in another place.
The speeds of the antelopes must vary according
to their sizes. Those beautiful creatures are as active and
swift as are their graceful appearances. The various motion
pictures of wild life in Africa and other countries have given
to the world's human eyes the sights of leaping antelopes, such
as would have been unbelievable if told about by human tongues
- the narratives of the returned traveler, hunters from distant
of little known parts of the world.
But now, thanks be to the motion picture camera,
the tales of adventurers, hunters, and travelers, are being
vindicated. The more we see of those pictures, the more delighted
and interested we find ourselves in the wonderful makes and
shapes of our coursing or running dogs, which we commonly designate
as belonging to the greyhound family.
I would prefer to call these long-legged, clean-necked,
fine-headed, small and of sometimes erect-eared, and always
whip-tailed dogs, as simply dogs rather than hounds. For a hound,
as I see him, is a dog that uses his nose for the purposes of
hunting, a dog that is a plodder rather than a fast-running
courser which depends on his sight, speed, stamina and teeth
for the overtaking and overpowering of the as speedy quarry,
beaten by the superior endurance of the dog, rather than the
pursuer's powers of galloping.
I have seen the South African steinbuck leap
up from under the nose of the walking horse which carried the
hunter. Before the cry of Sah! Sah! could escape the
lips, the two greyhounds were away on to the fleeing buck, a
beautiful creature with ideal cleanness and placement of shoulders,
and the enormous driving powers of the antelope's hindquarters.
Here was the make-up, the embodiment of activity and enormous
And, after ever so many years, the sight of
the springing-up buck comes back in the memory's eyes, the impression
created 35 to 40 years ago on the Transvaal veld. I again have
the view of the up-leaping steinbuck as he rose from his couch,
like a hare from her form. I see the spring into immediate action;
the movement, make, and shape of a wild animal, a form that
was instantly observed and perhaps understood, visualized as
the perfection of the graceful creature, whose watchfulness
and speed were its only weapons of protection against the numerous
enemies of the ruminants.
Yet man had been able to breed a dog which
was almost as speedy at the start and possessed more stamina
or lasting powers of running endurance than the antelope.