The Hound Without a Name: How a Stolen Foxhound Became the Face of an Anti-Hunting Campaign
At the League Against Cruel Sports rally outside Parliament on 9 May, a foxhound lay quietly at the campaigners' feet. Handled by Charlotte Smith of the Hull Wildlife Protectors, it became the unofficial mascot of the day, photographed alongside the broadcaster Chris Packham and his stepdaughter, the presenter Megan McCubbin. Yet for all its prominence, the hound had no public name and no stated origin, and none of the social media posts documenting the day explained where it had come from.
The animal is the face of Protect the Wild's Rehome The Hounds, campaign, which argues that hunts are weaponising foxhounds as a trail-hunting ban draws closer. Its premise is that rehomed hounds prove these pack animals can be adopted by individuals, feeding readers the lie that all 12,000 hounds in Britain's registered hunting packs could be rehomed.
The Telegraph has since put a name to the hound. It is Canvas, a six-year-old foxhound bred by Jack Harris, the huntsman of the Taunton Vale hunt in Somerset, from which she was allegedly snatched in February before being handed to saboteurs. Harris recognised her instantly, not least from her missing front left toe, which is plainly visible in the rally photographs.
“I know exactly what she looks like because I bred her,” Harris told the paper. He said he was “very upset” when he saw the photograph, adding that Canvas “had been part of the family for the last six years” and that his young daughter “is very fond of her.”
Smith, who was seen handling Canvas at the rally, is part of the Hull Wildlife Protectors and has been accused by the Holderness Hunt of aggravated trespass and harassment, and of flying a drone without the required CAA Flyer ID and Operator ID. With her name recurring across sab group after sab group - North London, Manchester, Sheffield, Ryedale, the York Anti-Hunt League, the Cheshire Monitors, the Welsh Border Wildlife Protectors - it shows a pattern that looks more like grassroots activism than a practised hand.
Packham, a prominent opponent of hunting, denied any knowledge of the hound’s origin. He was unrepentant about the cause, telling The Telegraph: “If I were a dog, I’d rather be Sid and Nancy [his two poodles] being loved by me, rather than being a nameless hound in a pack being fed on fallen livestock.” The remark only sharpens the contradiction at the heart of the campaign: if Rehome the Hounds gives every other dog on its website a name and a story, why is its most visible mascot the one animal it will not account for?
The British Hound Sports Association has written to Rob Pownall, the founder of Protect the Wild, demanding Canvas’s safe return. The letter does not mince words: “You must provide a written account explaining who supplied the hounds, who brought them to the relevant events, who handled them, who had responsibility for them and where they are now.” Protect the Wild did not respond to a request for comment.
Nor does the case appear to be isolated. Lincolnshire Police are investigating the disappearance of a foxhound named Genial from the Belvoir hunt in 2022, after a photograph emerged of a hound at another Protect the Wild event last month. The Belvoir hunt says the animal is theirs, identified by distinctive markings.
The hound now appears on Rehome the Hounds under an entirely different name, Alfred, and with it a new story. The site claims "the fact that he was left unclaimed on the side of the road says it all," an account that conveniently casts the hunt as the villain. If the Belvoir's identification is correct, Genial is a stolen foxhound given a false name and a fabricated history, framing the very hunt that lost him.
Neil Duncan-Jordan, an anti-hunting Labour MP who attended the event, said he had been told the hound was abandoned and had not questioned it, only later learning of the police investigation. James Finney, the Belvoir’s huntsman, was blunt about the toll: “It’s a horrible thing. Not knowing anything is the worst part about it. My hounds are an extended part of my family.”
This would not be the first time sabs have resorted to thievery. In November 2025, the master of the Burton hunt was alarmed to find himself one hound short after a day’s trail hunting, and even more alarmed to discover the trusty animal, ironically named Wayward, may have been taken by sab Maze Faye, who admitted that the hound was “taken from this abuser”.
In a separate and more serious case, Louise Murguia of the North Dorset Sabs was found to have stolen a lamb from a field, dressing it in a nappy and keeping it in her bedroom. Police later recovered the animal malnourished and close to death, the court hearing it weighed almost half what it should have and needed more than a week of intensive treatment to survive.
Tim Bonner, chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, said the behaviour “shows that these people aren’t really interested in animal welfare,” arguing that “anyone who had the best interest of the hounds at heart would know they should be kept with their pack in the environment they have always lived in.”
The timing could hardly be worse for the campaign. The revelations land just before the close of a government consultation on a proposed trail-hunting ban, which Labour has pledged to introduce on the grounds that the practice is a smokescreen for illegal fox hunting.
A BHSA spokesman seized on the irony: “At the very moment the Government is consulting on whether to ban trail hunting, two missing hounds from BHSA-recognised hunts appear to have been used as political props by those campaigning for that ban. These hounds were bred, trained and cared for by their hunts.”
With the consultation due to close in two days, the questions hang unanswered. Two foxhounds remain missing from recognised hunts, both huntsmen want them back, and the campaign that made Canvas its emblem has yet to explain how she got there.
