Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 24, 1994 TAG: 9407280042
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-11 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By MELISSA DeVAUGHN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PEMBROKE LENGTH: Long
Like the day he sat on a metal fold-out chair in the middle of his 11-acre pen with his beagle, Pal, in his lap. He gently rubbed Pal's ears and talked to him.
Touch is valuable to this 65-year-old retired limestone plant worker/turned beagle breeder. He's been legally blind since 1979.
"Pal," he said. "You're a fine fellow, but you just can't chase a rabbit ... you're just no good."
In response, Pal leaned his soft snout back and licked Bracken alongside his face up to his ear.
Bracken laughed and continued talking to the 2-year-old hunting dog until he noticed a flash in his limited peripheral vision. It was a rabbit; a big, fat one, and it came toward Bracken and his dog. Closer, closer, then - wham! - Pal was up in a flash, after the rabbit.
"After that day, he just turned around," Bracken said. "And he's been runnin' 'em ever since."
Bracken, a friendly old man with a broad smile and a bald head, is the owner of Dogwood Kennels, where he breeds and raises hunting beagles. The kennel is perched high on a hill above U.S. 460 in Pembroke, right next to the Bracken home. Bracken and his wife, affectionately called "Miss Ellie," have lived there since 1949.
Bracken says he raises beagles more for fun than anything else, and his small, tidy kennel shows it.
In a corner is an old cupboard, filled with trophies won in past hunting dog competitions. An old second-hand stereo receiver with one working speaker rests on top of the cupboard - Bracken said the music calms the puppies. On the wall are ribbons, framed pictures and pedigrees of past favorites - Max, Polly and Mattie, to name a few.
And at one end of the small kennel, underneath a plastic window, is a ragged lounge chair, threadbare, but comfortable-looking. It is here that Bracken spends time holding his pups, getting to know them and "spoiling them rotten," before sending them on to new homes.
There's something about watching a puppy grow from a half-pound weakling to a rabbit-chasing whiz that keeps Bracken up to his elbows in beagles. Ever since he was 15 years old, he's been taking the tight-muscled, compact hunting dogs out to running grounds, fine-tuning their rabbit-chasing abilities.
"To start a new puppy and see how enthused this puppy is about a rabbit scent - not to go kill - but just to see how well the dog performs tracking the rabbit and how quickly he [turns] when the rabbit turns - there's just nothing better," Bracken said.
Bracken's hobby has taken him and his beagles to countless field trials and certified hunting beagle competitions, where he has fared well.
In these competitions, dogs are put in packs and trained to chase rabbits. The goal of the trials is not to catch the rabbits, but to judge the accuracy with which a beagle can locate a scent and chase the rabbit. Judges watch how quickly the dog turns in response to the sudden turns of the rabbit and how quickly the dog will claim ownership of a scent by barking or "checking."
It's Little Blue Thunder that has been Bracken's pride and joy. The short-legged, gentle-eyed beagle has competed in 15 states and become a field champion, meaning he's won enough gundog competitions to put him at the top of his class as a certified hunting beagle.
"This is funny to me but probably not to other [beagle] handlers," Bracken said. "Blue Thunder's good; he knows how to win a trial. When he's at a check point [on the verge of picking up the rabbit scent], he'll watch the other dogs, and if they wouldn't bark, he would. The first dog to bark gets the claim, you see, so he'd steal that check right from those dogs because he watched."
In his cage, Little Blue Thunder looks like a sleepy-eyed porch dog, with his lazy eyes, velvety-soft ears and graying muzzle. When Bracken walks toward the pen -built close to the house, so he can visit the dog several times a day - Little Blue Thunder's eyes perk up and his short, skinny tail starts wagging.
"Blue Thunder's gonna be 9 years old this month, and he's just as spoiled now as he was the day I got him," Bracken said, laughing. "He loves to come in the house, and he'd stay in here if Miss Ellie would let him."
Bracken remembers when he bought Little Blue Thunder back in 1989. The dog was only 2 years old at the time, and had barely begun competing in field trials. Bracken, although he couldn't see Blue Thunder without the aid of a strong magnifying glass, could sense that the little bundle of muscles was a winner.
"People thought I was crazy, paying as much for him as I did, but he's a good dog, oh, yes, he is," Bracken said proudly. "He's a winner." A champion hunting dog can sell for over $2,000.
Evidence of Blue Thunder's accomplishments adorns the Bracken household. On a wall in the dining room is an artist's painting of Blue Thunder, a Christmas gift from Miss Ellie, painted on wood and gleaming under a heavy coat of shellac. In the upstairs hallway is a chair-sized trophy, won by Blue Thunder in a 1989 South Carolina competition. Little Blue Thunder's pedigree hangs on the wall in a neat frame, and various other photos of the champion beagle bedeck Bracken's office.
Bracken enjoys reliving the exciting gundog competitions with Little Blue Thunder, but his time in the fields is limited these days.
"I haven't been able to attend [field] trials because I don't drive now, and Miss Ellie and I are getting on in years," Bracken said. "But now I spend time with the dogs here at the house. It takes a lot of work, but I like it." Bracken has fenced in 11 acres of land that he carefully mows each week, leaving large cover bushes for the rabbits. It is here his beagles get to practice and run in near-freedom.
Although he may never run a beagle in competition again, Bracken knows he's still raising champions. In February, on the heels of the winter ice storms, Bracken went to Rocky Mount with a friend, Mike Mooney, and Mooney's 8-year-old son, Will, to a 19-team trial (each team had four dogs). Mooney's four dogs came from Bracken's kennel.
"I tell you, they put on a show," Bracken said. "I'd of been happy to even place, but we went and won the whole thing."
by CNB