Chasing Hares (NHB Modern Plays)

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You don’t say how long you’ve had him for, but it often takes six months to establish a basic relationship with an adopted adult dog. It could yet be early days. Tragedy, in fact, isn’t far off, as might be expected from a work that won the 2021 playwriting award from Theatre Uncut, an entity formed in 2011 to galvanise politically-engaged writing across the spectrum.

Archie, a fell terrier, settled into home life well and is generally a happy and relaxed dog. The main issue is that he has started to bite Mr Johnson, mainly on the hands but he will also pounce on, and bite his feet when he walks around the house especially if he walks up the stairs. Thank you so much for this useful information. I wonder if all of this applies to my chocolate Labrador. We’ve been working on walking nicely on the lead for a few years. He tends to respond well too, but his major problem are cats (sometimes squirrels and crows, but never to the same extent). He can go from being walking happily next to me to trying to get off his harness (he can’t), pull so much in the attempt to escape and chase cats. This is especially true in our neighbourhood, we live at the end of a quiet Close with a green in the middle, he doesn’t exhibit the same behaviour anywhere else (he just knows there’s cats around). I’m usually very perceptive of his body language but sometimes he does a 360 in a split second and has almost dislocated my thumb several times. My solution has always been to drive him somewhere else for his walks or off lead time, sometimes even at the end of the road we live in and go from there. The way I feel is I can keep working on our lead work, but I feel like I’ll never ever be more interesting than going after a cat. Regarding chasing hare and roe, again this is a dog who has been allowed to get away with it in the past so try and find a trainer with a rabbit pen that has plenty of distractions to enable you to make sure he knows, in no uncertain terms, that chasing anything is unacceptable. Running him for long distances builds up his stamina, so the more he runs the fitter he becomes – it doesn’t tire him out. Stimulus removal is very difficult indeed as squirrels are everywhere except for the beach which is our daily walk. We love walking out doors and find it hard to avoid rabbit and squirrel free places where we live.The first thing to recognise is that this is not going to be easy. You have a dog that is in the ‘difficult’ category, but that means when you succeed it will be all the more enjoyable 🙂 I take him to the beach everyday where he can run freely, he loves to chase the waves but never gets too close as he hates water.

I wanted to write about 'jatra' or Bengali folk theatre, as an art form that has developed from dramatisations of religious stories from the Mahabharata to plays that reflect the lives of real people and events. Now, jatra is struggling to compete with Hindi cinema and cable TV, so I see the persistent love for jatra from the characters in Chasing Hares as a leap of faith. A leap of faith similar to that needed to believe things can change, and to act on that belief. My 15 month old Male Lab cross is well socialised and not anxious about anything, although he hates being on the lead, and this can lead to aggressive barking and pulling towards other dogs. This largely disappears if off the lead and allowed to approach, sniff and play. Yesterday we were walking in loggerheads in Wales and the first hour in the woods was fine and we were using the 2 ball method until she lost one. When I throw only one ball she knows she can posses it and then the chase begins as she is in control and can choose to retrieve or posses. Whilst possessing, she saw a squirrel and instantly chased in warp facto 11 and did not return for some 10 minutes. Chasing Hares pulls together so many precious threads from my personal and family experience of work precarity and political and cultural resistance in West Bengal. What is your favourite exhilarating activity? Hang gliding, ballroom dancing, cuddling your grandchildren, alligator wrestling, strip scrabble, or extreme ironing? Imagine you are halfway through and I say, “Stop that now and I’ll give you a biscuit.”Each part of the inherited hunting sequence is internally reinforcing. Dogs don’t need a biscuit as a reward for performing it; they do it out of sheer pleasure. In brain chemistry terms they get a buzz of dopamine every time they perform an inherited motor pattern. This is the same reward system abused by people taking Cocaine or Ecstasy, so you can imagine the addictive possibilities! The story has some too-neat parallels between West Bengal and the UK and it is perhaps too sentimental in its ending, but this is easily forgiven when weighed up against its emotional power and intelligence. It’s true that some dogs need the stimulation of a running animal, and that familiar ones may be less attractive to chase too. What would happen if the fable Prab were to pen contained within it a rebuke, however implicit, of the very same dehumanising circumstances in which he finds himself? Before long, Prab is set on a collision course with the vainglorious Devesh which culminates in a second-act face-off in which a diffuse narrative strikes real dramatic sparks.

You can’t deal with a long standing chase problem in isolation. Because we are working within the parameters of internal reinforcement and a need to perform the behaviour, we are interfering with the balance of the dog’s emotions. Dogs have a limited number of ways of improving their emotions and if we temporarily deny them an opportunity their emotional balance may plummet, leaving them stressed and anxious. My biggest concern is his need to run off leash, how can this be done safely? Should I let him off lead at all I wonder? Will he get very frustrated if I always walk him on leash?

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Since I started writing the first draft in 2018, Uber and Deliveroo riders have won landmark cases here and in the US, and we've seen the biggest strike in human history in India. And that relationship will be your start point. It has to be forged and guided by you, otherwise he’ll continue to do whatever it is he likes. My Guide and Control book gives you some pointers on how to do that. Bhattacharyya and Bhatia had been wanting to work together for some time before Bhatia, who is best known for directing Jasmine Lee-Jones’s Olivier-nominated Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner, directed a rehearsed reading of another of Bhattacharyya’s plays. That was King Troll – The Fawn. “We were a bit shy before we met,” she recalls, while Bhatia puts her head in her hands and laughs. “It was a bit like a date. I was like: ‘I think you’re really cool,’ and I was hoping that she thought I was really cool as well.” What have people done before? What has worked? How have people stood up? That can be a model for building a better world Sonali Bhattacharyya A dog with chase drive towards the top end of the scale is not easy to control because it is very difficult to counter internally reinforcing behaviour with external reinforcement. A dog will not stop chasing for the promise of a biscuit simply because a biscuit is not as valuable as the internal dopamine boost from the chase behaviour. In fact, nothing is more valuable than the thrill of the chase. Neither can you punish them into stopping for good. As a result of the very successful APBC predatory chase seminars and the frequent requests for more information on the subject, I’ve expanded this article into a full book.

I am looking for advice please on how I can try and stop the total focus on birds, if I can stop it, or should we walk them elsewhere … other local parks are too close to very busy roads so I cannot let them off their leads there. Is this a “phase”? I retired last year and we collected them two days later so I am with them the majority of the time Enjoyed ready your interesting article. I have a 16mth old Labrador bitch who has respiratory fed well to all training aspects, including elementary gun dog training. Is, by & large, very good with recall both verbal & whistle. How er, her (well, mostly mine!) is chasing other dogs. Has been getting much better & with a lot of dogs will just sniff m, say hello & come away. BUT a little dog who runs & yaps is game to her. She is relentless! Always ends in the little dog being frightened as my dog is big, strong & very excitable. Invariably I get shouted at by the dog’s owner (quite right). My dog doesn’t chase anything else but is so excitable around like minded dogs . I am trying hard with toys etc to hold her attention to me but if I take my ‘eye off the ball’ she’ll chase if opportunity arises. Never runs off out of sight. Is this puppy excitement that will diminish or something I can train out of her. Such a darling dog apart from this.You and your dog have incompatible requirements. You want to go for a run and your dog to come with you. Your dog, like most dogs, finds just running for long distances very boring and is going off doing what he enjoys, which is hunting. Hunting is great fun and he can do it without any input from you. You therefore become surplus to requirements, so he doesn’t listen to you. The binaural award ceremony will remain available for everyone everywhere to listen to at https://www.theatreuncut.com/award2021