Page 280 - Demo

276The second day we would show them how to make snares and set fishing lines. We would also show them how to kill, pluck and gut a chicken and then let them have perhaps one between 4 of them. Mary supplied the chickens, and they were the scrawniest things you have ever seen. We just let them go and they had to catch them. They learnt that the best thing to do was just standstill then creep up slowly and throw aflying jacket over it. I eventually got permission to take my dog Harry up with me. He was a spaniel type dog. If the students could not catch a chicken, I let him go and he would herd it up to the fence and sit with his paw on it until they picked it up. He would also point out where rabbits were. We would be walking along, and he would stop and stare at a tussock of grass. I would tell them to surround it and be ready. They all had sticks and I would say that he would flush it out when they were ready and then they could hit it. If they got it it was theirs. They seldom believed me but would usually stand around in a desultory manner. I would stamp, Harry would leap in and a rabbit would belt away. They never got one but did pay a bit more attention after that. Harry loved the LSEs. To begin with he used to hate being in a car and would dribble all the time, often piled on top of a load of students in the back. But the range was closed in May for lambing and so we had to work the courses around that. On one occasion, we did 2 courses just a week apart and that cured him. I told the students not to wind him up as he would love it but had no off switch. Hanging on to someone%u2019s jacket cuff and fighting it was his idea of fun. They were a bit worried about him as they thought he might search them out later in the exercise but while he would go into their shelters and look for contraband chocolate for example, he would never look for them. On one occasion he had got out of our wood and was chasing rabbits. I saw that he had caught a baby one. It%u2019s head and front paws were sticking out of his mouth. He then saw an adult rabbit and opened his mouth as he set off to chase. The baby rabbit jumped out and ran away. If he did catch a rabbit he would