Book Reviews
Spaniels
by Nick Ridley
ISBN: 978-1-84689-061-1
Quiller Publishing Ltd | July 2009 | £18.95
The pack of cur dogs in our house currently consists of two retired coursing greyhounds and a sort of Jack Russell terrier with a bad mouth. The gentle, benign and undemanding nature of the greyhounds seems to be nicely balanced by the wicked, unprincipled and selfish nature of the terrier. But my first dog was an English Springer spaniel called Ben. I think my father got Ben when I was about five years old and we had him until he died when I was about the age of sixteen.
Spaniels are nowadays one of the most popular dogs in Britain, being second only to the Labrador in KC registrations. They were not particularly popular when I was a boy just after the war, but I was fond of Ben and assumed all dogs were like spaniels. I have to say that I never had another – not because I disliked the breed, but because other breeds just happened to us.
This book by Nick Ridley is, essentially, a book of photographs of spaniels of all shapes and sizes and many of the pictures brought back to me memories of Ben, about whom I had forgotten years ago. Springer and Cocker spaniels were originally bred to hunt, flush and retrieve game and now, of course, are extremely popular as pets. They have also been trained to work as Hearing Dogs for deaf people; to hunt out explosives and drugs and, more recently, they have even been trained to detect cancer cells in human urine.
Nick Ridley has been involved in photography for over twenty-five years and this experience, coupled with a lifetime of being around working dogs, gives him an undeniable edge when photographing them. He is a full time professional dog photographer and in 1988 started what has become one of the most high profile and well respected dog event photography businesses in the country. His articles and images are regularly used in animal publications and he has made regular radio and television appearances.
There are more than one hundred and fifteen images of spaniels in all moods, of all ages and in all situations in this book. The text is limited, but the pictures speak for themselves and if you like spaniels, this book is for you.
Long Netting from Peg to Peg
by Martin King
ISBN: 978-1-84689-058-1
Quiller Publishing Ltd | April 2009 | £16.95
Martin King is a Suffolk man who has always lived in the countryside and has run a successful pest control business for some years. Net making grew into part of the business and he now supplies other pest controllers and countrymen with bespoke hand-made nets. The setting of nets for the control and removal of rabbits is quite a lost art and this book is fascinating to read. One can quickly tell he is an expert at what he does.
Rabbits are a real pest which all farmers, smallholders and gardeners want to control. Long Netting from Peg to Peg is a definitive work on this much needed fieldcraft and an absolute must-have for the hobby sportsman as well as those involved in gamekeeping or pest control as a livelihood. Long netting is one of the most humane, successful and traditional methods of controlling rabbits and the book also describes and illustrates very clearly modern techniques never published before.
The spread of the rabbit in Australia, which first arrived there from Europe towards the end of the eighteenth century, is a story in itself. Originally bred for food, they quickly established themselves in the wild to such an extent that by 1901 a Royal Commission was set up to investigate the problem. No effective control had been found before the introduction of Myxomatosis in 1950. This caused the rabbit population to drop from an estimated population of 600 million to around 100 million.
This disease was also introduced into the UK later in the 1950s and, as a result, many people here no longer wish to eat rabbit meat after seeing infected rabbits in the British countryside. Now there is some genetic resistance to the disease which has allowed the population to recover somewhat in both countries.
The book explains the principles of orthodox long netting in detail and also covers drop nets; gate nets; stop nets and ditch nets. It informs us that the advantage of using nets over other means of control is that rabbits can not only be caught very effectively by this method, but that the they are caught with the minimum of damage and can be used as a source of genuine organic meat for the table. Moreover, the book also tells us how to prepare the rabbits for the table and even gives a favourite recipe for the making of a good, old-fashioned, rabbit stew. This is one of those how-to books written by a countryman who can really communicate his skill.
Reviewed by:
David Hindle