Deerhound and what it means to be Scottish

Today my trip to the vet found that I did not have toothache but instead, soft tissue damage around the left side of my face from an injury sustained during one of my many lively escapades. Not clearly visible - but administer an anti inflamitory and ‘bobs your uncle’, the bank account is empty again.

It’s near impossible for we hounds to save for a rainy day when we’re paying the veterinary bills.

So I am staying at home reading the very interesting ‘A Dance Called America. The Scottish Highlands the United States and Canada’ book by ‘James Hunter’. I have discovered an interesting passage formerly written by Canadian author, Hugh MacLennan describing his father. This little excerpt not only sums up the Scottish Highland character, but is also a fine representation of the Scottish Deerhounds nature and temprament.

When he describes how his father was simply Scotch, he could easily have been referring to we deerhounds . . .

’All the perplexity and doggedness of the race was in him, its loneliness, tenderness and affection, its deceptive vitality, its quick flashes of violence, its dog-whistle sensitivity to sounds to which Anglo-Saxons are stone deaf, its incapacity to tell its heart to foreigners save in terms foreigners do not comprehend, its resigned indifference to whether they comprehend or not.’

Its any and every deerhound.