I grew up in a dog crazy family that happened to live in a rural part of West Virginia, where dogs could roam freely and hunt game at their leisure.
My parents built their home on the same farm that my grandpa purchased in the 50's. My dad used to swing on the grapevines that grew in the big ash trees on a small promontory that overlooked the creek. When he had saved enough money to build his own house, he chose that promontory, and the ash boards that came from the trees were used to build various rooms.
My grandparents and their dogs lived nearby-- just a short walk up a gravel road.
My grandpa lived for his hunting dogs. He always had a brace of beagles to hunt the rabbits that frequented the multiflora rose thickets that popped up on the overgrown parts of the fields. He even trained my grandma's standard dachshund to be an excellent hunting dog. He would bolt rabbits from groundhog dens and grapple with groundhogs in their extensive earths. If only smooth dachshunds had thicker fur, he would have been better protected from the thorny undergrowth.
Now, training a dachshund to hunt game isn't such a big deal. In their native country, they are still widely used. But my grandpa's most unusual hunting dog was his chihuahua that flushed grouse and treed squirrels. Not too many people have used chihuahuas to hunt things. Toy dogs aren't supposed to hunt things. I believe there is a rule.
But as interesting as it was to have little chihuahuas and dachshunds as hunting companions, my grandpa's favorite dogs were Norwegian elkhounds. He preferred elkhounds to hunt varmints and small rabbits, simply because they were natural hunters. They required almost no training to work the brush and briers, and they were usually going hunting on their own by the time they were four or five months old. He would train his dogs to work in close very easily. If they ranged out too far, he just left them in the woods. He also taught them that if they barked while a squirrel was in a tree, he'd fire his gun and the squirrel would be back on the ground. Because of those two incentives, the dogs always worked close in and near the gun.
There are two breeds of Norwegian elkhound: the gray and the black. The gray is the AKC dog, silver agouti gray with a very thick tail and a black mask. For a sptiz-type dog, it is quite biddable.
The lesser known breed is the black Norwegian elkhound. It has a shorter coat and relatively large ears. It is also solid black in color, and its temperament is more "primitive." They don't take orders very well, but if they can see the reason for doing something, they will do it.
The black breed is virtually unknown in this country, but somehow my grandpa purchased one in the late 50's. He was a very good squirrel and varmint dog. A gray bitch was purchased, and she was bred to the black dog. Out of that mixture came his own line of hunting elkhounds.
Elkhounds became a very common hunting dog in West Virginia,
And they remained a very common hunting breed in my part of world up until about the 1990's. I used to think those dog originated in West Virginia. I never saw them anywhere else.
One of my grandpa's favorite dogs was named Fonzarelli ("The Fonz." from Happy Days.). He was a pure gray dog and was very plucky and very smart. Because he was raised around beagles, he could be used to tree squirrels and flush grouse and work the brier patches for cottontails.
His mentor was an aged beagle named Willy, and Willy took it upon himself to to teach Fonzie all the tricks to hunting. Because they lived in a rural area, the old beagle used to take the elkhound pup out every day.
This activity went on for years and years until the old beagle got down with arthritis. Then the elkhound got concerned. He wanted the old beagle to go with him, but he couldn't go on cold days. So the elkhound would bark and bark at him until he got up.
I think that the barks from that elkhound made Willy live a little bit longer. He lived long enough to babysit me while my parents built their house. He was the first dog I really got to know, and he was so what a beagle should be. Sweet. Gentle. And very tolerant of children.
The elkhound I got to know the best was Fonzie's successor. For some reason, he was named Frito. He was half black and half gray. And he was a stubborn, very cocky dog.
He also really liked kids. He really liked me. He wasn't doting like the old beagle. He was more like a nature guide, showing me different things
I would go walking in the woods with him-- walking in the woods with a dog is old habit of mine that dates back to around when I was two years old. My parents would read books to me about wolves, particularly Mowgli's Brothers in The Jungle Book, and I would imagine that Frito was a black wolf and I was Mowgli.
As I grew up, I moved onto other breeds. Frito grew old, and when he died, my grandpa decided to stop keeping puppies. He kept his old mongrel beagle as his last dog.
The Elkhound Days faded from my family's history. Now we're all about goldens and Jack Russells.
Those dogs meant a lot to my grandpa. He spent long hours in the woods with them, learning from them and reconnecting with that ancient past that exists within all of us. We were all once people walking the forest primeval. A prick-eared dog leads us on through the trails and traces. His nose quivers as it breathes in the scents of the wild beasts. Aurochs. Bison. Wild horse. Reindeer. Red and roe deer. Mammoths. The slinging of arrows. The bark of dogs. The spilling of blood. The cutting of meat. All poorly reconstructed with a barking dog, a shotgun blast, and a gray squirrel falling from a tree.
Poorly reconstructed.
But still connected.
And now fading away.
