Chaos of dead poultry with heads bitten off as a fox pays a call

Walking was not easy, with plenty of mud and standing water to negotiate; what on earth did people do before the invention of Wellington boots?

This is useful reconnaissance, because the youngest dog is working on a task for which she has only recently shown aptitude, and that is following fox scent.

She is self-taught: it is in the genes and no mistake, but you never know how the traits will come out in each pup until they do.

Oblivious to the soaking, which caught us out in the open, she has had her nose down ever since visiting my neighbour's poultry run after the fox had called.

Tragically, it was the night she had left someone else to shut the fowl in, and they had not been secured properly. Foxes are opportunists, and this one calls probably every night.

You can hear a row of neighbourhood dogs barking one after the other, following the run of the fox, setting off dogs and security lights on his regular route.

Foxes are great creatures of habit, and it is habit that brings them to book, for once you have their times and pathways, you have them.

This one's lottery ticket had come up, and the result was a chaos of dead poultry, just with their heads bitten off, some left in a ragged line of blood and scattered feathers where the fox had tried to take them back to its lair and lost interest along the way.

Foxes are simply being foxes, but people must be people as well, and this one had its card marked. I

If not dealt with, it would return again and again, cleaning out the survivors and possibly then moving on to the pet fowl of other neighbours, for many households keep a few chickens or ducks nowadays, which provide eggs and add beauty to the garden.

They are good pets for children, too, affable and talkative, teaching the responsibility of looking after another being that has its own needs.

The young dog had taken a lot of interest in the outer fence where the fox had dug its way through, then the door it had worked open, and she had smelled carefully at the corpses left behind, making no attempt to chew or play with them.

It was the fox scent she was after, not the fowl.

In that long, slinging trot, she set off along the invisible line of scent, coming back to me to urge me on, and showing me where the trail led.

We had gone in an unexpected direction and found an earth of which I had not been previously aware.

Such is the power of a dog's nose, following not just any fox scent but the scent of that individual fox.

The rest was no longer my job, for legally the task that for years had been ours to do was forbidden us.

Something different had to be done, and I was not the person to do it.

However, the work we had accomplished would be valuable in bringing "Bold Reynard" to book.

Drops of silver water flew from the pup's coat as she shook, and bedewed the damp tweed of my coat as I warmed up again. Soon we would be back to the track, and some easier walking, on the way to delivering our news.

Tonight the sequence of dogs might bark, and the odd security light come on down the row of cottages, but then again, if my neighbour was successful, they might not.

It was not the first time I had done this, nor will it be the last, but it was the first time for the pup, and I was more than pleased with her.

Foxglove

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Chaos of dead poultry with heads bitten off as a fox pays a call