25/12/2025
Many are eloquently expressing what the changes to the Animal Welfare strategy will mean to them and the effect it will have.
These are the words of someone who cares deeply about hounds and way of life.
“It begins when most of the world is asleep.
With frost on the ground, breath in the air and the low, familiar sound of hounds greeting the day.
Early mornings that blur into late nights.
Hands that know every face, every habit, every heartbeat.
A deep admiration for animals bred to work and a responsibility to their welfare that never switches off - not on Sundays, not on Christmas, not when it’s cold, wet, or hard.
These hounds are not symbols of class.
They are living beings we know individually.
We watch them age, we worry over them, we celebrate their strength and mourn their passing.
Their welfare is not part of 'sport' it's our daily duty.
This life brings rural communities together in ways that are invisible from the outside.
Farmers, landowners, kennel staff, neighbours - people who understand that showing up matters.
That looking after one anothers welfare is as important as looking after the land itself.
Trail hunting is part of this life. Lawful, regulated, and rooted in daily work, not the cruelty it is so often reduced to in a headline.
But there is a darker side.
The loneliness, the weight of abuse from people who have never stood where we stand.
Never felt the silence of responsibility.
Never loved an animal, nature or the land that depends on you entirely, yet feel entitled to judge from a click bate headline.
This way of life was not chosen, it was learned.
Passed down from generation to generation, through watching, through doing, through respect for animals, land, and hard work.
It carries history and tradition in its hands.
I don’t expect everyone to understand.
But recognise, that behind today’s headlines are real families, real hounds, and lives built quietly and carefully, long before they became something to argue over.”
Thank you Jodie C
