Read The Opening

Read The Opening

Foreword
I was married, bought a house and my first Cocker Spaniel in

1970,The house was a cosy two bed roomed terraced type,
with a small garden. There was no room for an outside dog
run, therefore the choice of a small Spaniel to live indoors was
made for me.
Previous shooting forays happened when I managed to coax an
old Irish Water Spaniel away from an elderly coracle man’s front
porch, to accompany me hunting the brambles alongside a
disused railway line for rabbits, or, duck shooting on the nearby
Towy river. As I remember, the dog would retrieve ducks perfectly
if they landed in the river, however, if they landed on the opposite
bank, he would eat them first before making a laboured swim
back. Ah good ol ‘Sion’…….
I could not wait to train my own dog. Sweep was a small,
handsome, black and white Cocker dog, and I adored him. I had
him whistle trained, sitting, staying, steady to a thrown dummy,
and could direct him left or right at a distance, by the age of seven
months. Perhaps, I had taken the drive out of him, by installing
too much discipline too soon, in one so young. Whatever the
reason, he was a weak indifferent hunter, and of no use to me, the
roughest of rough shooters, as he was. I set out to rectify the
situation. I began by taking him out at night to nearby school
playing fields, where with the help of a powerful lamp, I would
encourage him to coarse rabbits. At first he would chase them to

a nearby bramble thicket, and bark after them as they
disappeared into their sanctuary. As his confidence grew, he
would make timid exploratory excursions into the brambles, until
by the age of 16 months he treated the abrasive cover with
absolute disdain.
My shooting companions, at that time, all shot over English
Springer Spaniels, and thought I was quite mad with this little
Cocker in tow, surely “that” could not be a man’s dog??
Sweep and I were happy to prove them wrong over the years. We
did our share of wildfowling on the Taf and Towy estuaries. Sweep
would dive like an otter after diving wounded duck. He bravely
faced the tidal bore every time he was required to make a retrieve.
However, the glutinous mud that stuck to his fur did not make
him popular with Margaret, my long suffering wife, upon our
return home.
Game was scarce in those days, and Sweep would be required
to hunt for 4 – 5 hours for scant reward, maybe 3-4 woodcock
and as many rabbits. Our dogs were never steadied to flush, if
we “legged” a rabbit, we expected the dogs to retrieve it, before
it made a hole. They were wild, but could thrash cover, and we
would have to run to keep abreast with them when they were
“hot” behind a rabbit. Sweep could never keep up with his larger
Springer cousins, when this happened, but he regularly flushed
the game that had doubled back, or that they had missed in
their haste.
The scarcity of game, meant concentration levels