Posted in Identify the species on January 28, 2010 | 10 Comments »
I will reveal the answer tomorrow afternoon, when I have more time to write.
Someone did correctly identify this unusual python.
Intrigued? Stay tuned!
Posted in dog behavior, wild dogs, wildlife, wolves, tagged dog domestication, dogs, Romeo the Wolf, wolf behavior, wolves on January 27, 2010 | 12 Comments »
From the Anchorage Daily News.
Romeo was a black wolf that lived near Juneau who loved to play with dogs. (I have written about him here.)
Well, he hasn’t been seen since September, and because he is estimated to be 7 0r 8 years old, he may have died of old age.
Or a neighboring wolf pack has killed him.
Or a bear.
Or maybe it was the former governor.
Or maybe he found a bitch wolf, and they were able to form a pack.
***
Well, here’s some footage of Romeo from last winter. He’s hanging out with his Labrador friends.
***
How Romeo came to be so friendly with the local dogs is the subject of several stories. One of which goes that Romeo’s mate was killed by a cab, and Romeo was left on his own. Not seeing other wolves with which he could form a relationship, Romeo began to see out dogs for companionship.
BTW, it has been rumored that Romeo has killed small dogs, and this photo is often offered up as evidence. That’s a pug he’s carrying in his mouth. The truth is the pug was not injured at all. Romeo was just playing. Apparently, someone took their pugs out to the Romeo’s area in hopes of enticing him out for a photo session. Romeo grabbed one pug and ran off with it, but he ran off for only about ten feet before dropping the pug.
Posted in wild dogs, wildlife, tagged gray fox, urocyon on January 27, 2010 |
Posted in Absolute Piffle, wild dogs, wildlife, wolves on January 27, 2010 |
I have played this game before, and it is very hard to bring down an elk. The grizzlies and the coyotes will not let you have any peace once you’ve brought the elk down. You can kill the coyotes, but the bears are really hard to run off.
If you’d like to play this game, download it here.
Posted in dog behavior, tagged dog behavior, feral dogs on January 27, 2010 |
This stray dog lived at the Grand Canyon. He became a kind of feral dog, living on what he could scavenge. He was evidently not so wild that he could not be handled, but he was obviously not accustomed to it.
I don’t know whether it is accurate that this dog is part Briard. Briards are not a common breed.
There is one way to tell. Briards have double dewclaws on the hind legs, which is a dominant trait.
If you watched the whole episode of DogTown last Friday, Shaggy makes a transformation from a nervous and very scared dog into an animal that can walk nicely on a leash and play with other dogs.
When this animal first appeared on the show, I didn’t think there was much chance of turning him around. Dogs that live as wild animals don’t easily convert to living in such intimate terms with people. My first thought was that maybe Shaggy would have been better off if he had been left at the Grand Canyon.
But he managed to adapt to these new conditions, and in the end, he seemed happy to be a loved dog. He became nothing like the wild creature that was brought in at the beginning of the show. It was a truly remarkable transformation.
Posted in dog breeds, Flat-coated retriever, golden retriever, golden retriever history, Retriever history, working dogs, working retrievers, tagged Flat-coated retriever, golden retriever, Retriever history, wavy-coated retriever on January 27, 2010 |
Cornwall Legh
Among the top flat-coated retriever fanciers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was Lieutenant-Colonel H.M. Cornwall Legh. Colonel Legh was a vice president of the Kennel Club and expert breeder of flat-coat show dogs. He is believed to have produced at least 500 flat-coats in his life time. At a time in which purebred dogs were uncommon, this is a significant number, and his dogs definitely had a major influence on the flat-coated retriever.
Here are some photos of two of his champion flat-coats:
Ch. Pirate
Although liver and red/gold/yellow flat-coats (mostly of the Tweedmouth strain) existed at this time, virtually all show dogs of any merit were black dogs. In working gun dogs, black was the preferred color for a retriever. Both show and field communities had a strong bias against retrievers that were not of a black coloration.
However, the winner of the 1904 International Gun Dog League’s retriever trial was a liver flat-coat named Don of Gerwn. Don of Gerwn’s dam was a liver bitch named Rust, a very celebrated retriever in her own right, and his sire was a dog from the Tweedmouth strain,the strain from which the golden retriever developed and a definite yellow dog.
Don of Gerwn
So while black was the preferred coloration, yellows, reds, and livers still existed. When the yellow coloration for the flat-coat was recognized in 1908, there was hope that the yellow and red dogs would be able to compete on the same level as the black dogs. However, there is very little evidence that these dogs ever did.
Not being able to win, some dedicated fanciers who were breeding dogs of the yellow and red color began working on splitting off this color and making it a separate breed.
And that’s really when the golden retriever as we know it today developed.
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