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Archive for February, 2016

A pretty nice dog wins Westminster

Posted in dog breeding, tagged German short-haired pointer, Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show on February 16, 2016| 7 Comments »

A very sound specimen of a breed I really like a lot wins BIS at Westminster:

cj

Not complaining.

I wish the AKC allowed black roan in this breed though.

 

 

 

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I wasn’t going to do this

Posted in dog breeding, dog health on February 16, 2016| 8 Comments »

But this dog won the Nonsporting Group at Westminster last night.

annabelle

If we’re celebrating purebred dogs, the best way is to shun the ol’ sourmug.

This is the breed that has pretty much everything wrong with it, except that it doesn’t get matted fur.

This is the most buggered up dog that “sound scientific breeding” ever produced, and the fact that people want to buy these–and spend a fortune on them– is just a sign that people still are suffering from having too much money and not enough sense.

When you get one of these dogs, you’re pretty much guaranteeing that the animal won’t live long and will have at least one or two emergencies that could have been prevented had the dog not had such an exaggerated conformation.

I was going to stay out of this nonsense this year, but the fates were not with me.

Let’s just hope this poor thing doesn’t wind up Best in Show.

If that happens, it will just be another sad day for dogs, and the American purebred dog establishment of this country continues on into irrelevancy.

I don’t have the piss and vinegar that I once possessed to attack the modern concept of a bulldog.

I’m just sad.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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German driven shoot in the fog

Posted in hunting, working dogs, working retrievers, tagged common pheasant, Drahthaar, European brown hare, German hunting, Kurzhaar, Langhaar, Teckel on February 16, 2016| 1 Comment »

Here’s a good video of German hunters going after hares and pheasants with an assortment of dogs, including Drahthaars and Kurzhaars as well as at least one Langhaar and a wire-haired teckel.

There is a lot of ceremony involved in German hunting traditions, but I particularly enjoy the dog that howls along with the horns at the end.

 

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Coyotes cavorting in the snow

Posted in wild dogs, tagged coyote, coyotes, Eastern coyote on February 15, 2016| 1 Comment »

The tracks tell the tale of two coyotes in the night.

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There were two sets of tracks in the snow.  They came from different directions, but at one point the two sets of tracks intersected.

I can only assume that the two coyotes fought or mated here.

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The snow was really torn up at this meeting place. I like to hope it was the latter.

February is the month of madness. This is when the normally paranoid coyotes become a little less paranoid and do silly things like copulate out in the open and jump golden retrievers in the dark.

I recently purchased a diaphragm howling call for coyotes, but I have had no luck in getting them to respond to my howls– until this weekend.

I was standing on a ridge-top in heavy timber, when I let loose a few howls and a yip-howl. It was just starting to get dark, and the sun was casting pink shades on the snow. Out of the gloomy hollow before me the rose the wild dog song.

It sounded like there were two. A deeper voiced dog and higher-pitched bitch.

They carried on for no more than a minute, and then there was silence.

But for a brief moment, I’d made a connection with these truly wild beings. Though almost  dogs, they are distinctly not dogs.  Where the dog lives in such intimacy with humans, the coyote lives on the edge of our existence. It is a creature of the fleeting glimpse and the midnight slink.

A coyote is a dog undominated, unowned.

It lives in spite our desires.

And that is why people hate them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Sometimes people just suck

Posted in animal welfare, Carnivorans, wildlife, tagged Asiatic black bear, dancing bear on February 14, 2016| 1 Comment »

There is nothing brilliant about the cruelty of a “dancing” Asiatic black bear.

I’m sure there are teachings in Islam against abusing animals, but even if there weren’t, this is disgusting and evil.

 

 

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The obligatory and predictable anti-AKC post during Westminster

Posted in dog breeds, dog health on February 14, 2016| 1 Comment »

trump and hickory

“This dawg is terrific! A real winner!”

It’s that time of year.

The United States is having its big dog show Monday and Tuesday, and it will be watched.

And the laity will whine about why the Labrador isn’t Best in Show, because, um, aren’t they the best dog ever?

Then we’ll have a few  of the dog blogs writing a screed or two about how awful dog shows are.

This breed hasn’t been worked in a thousand years!

Dog show rings wreck our breeds!

And so on.

At one time, I would write these very same blog posts, but to be honest with you, I don’t see the point in them anymore.

In the grand scheme of North American dogdom, it really doesn’t matter what goes on with the major all-breed registries or the dog shows. Compared to what happens with the NFL, most Americans don’t care,  and they have never followed what the dog fanciers say.

You can make arguments all you want, but it isn’t going to change what the hardcore fancier wants to believe.

And the public is moving on. The AKC is a moribund institution that never really had that much support from American dog lovers.

So I’m to the point now of detente, but only because the horse is dead and continued flagellation isn’t going to get him moving any time soon.

I have more interesting things to think about than why people want to own a bulldog or participate in conformation shows.

When one is young, one can expend so much energy being angry that one forgets to think, and I think I can finally say I’m done being angry.

The dogs are going to be fine. If you think something is wrong, there will always be an alternative.

And there are more people who either bucking the system or operating outside of it than who are operating within it.

So I’m just going to chill the f*ck out.

 

 

 

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Coyote steaks

Posted in Uncategorized, wild dogs, tagged coyote, coyote meat on February 13, 2016| 1 Comment »

This made my morning:

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