THE COMPLETE LURCHER: A MANUAL. By Brian Plummer.

1979 1st edition. 8vo (158 x 238mm). Pp182. B/w photographs, illustrations by Martin Knowelden. Brown boards, spine titled in silver-gilt.

This is Brian Plummer's statement of what the old-fashioned working lurcher was and ought to be, as well as how to go about obtaining something of the sort for yourself. Chapters include: The legendary Norfolk lurcher; The modern lurcher; The greyhound; The sight hound crosses - the deerhound, salukis, Irish wolfhounds, borzois, whippets/greyhounds, pharaoh hounds and Ibizan hounds; The pastoral breed crosses - border collies, bearded collies, rough collies, Old English sheepdog, Alsatian; The terrier crosses - Bedlington, bull terriers, Kerry blues and Irish terriers, Airedales; Sundry other crosses - foxhounds and beagles, retrievers, whippet lurchers; The arts of training and entering - basic training, retrieving, jumping, entering to quarry; Lamping and net work; The quarry itself - the rabbit, ferreting for rabbits, the hare, the fox, red deer, fallow deer, roe deer; The breeding of lurchers - first-cross mating, lurcher to greyhound matings the problems, lurcher x lurcher matings, the mating process, care of the bitch in pregnancy, whelping and the care of the litter; Disease - lethal infections, distemper, hard pad, hepatitis or Rhubarth's disease, leprospiral jaundice, carnicola fever - minor common ailments, mange, eczema, wounds, ear canker, worms.