visit from royalty

The two snoozing boys are now snoring. They have had so much excitement that they can't stay conscious. We had our first visit with Brisztow Jones... yes, the real live Urban Mutt, Her Regal Majesty of the Blogosphere.... and her nephew, Baxter. If you're wondering what it's like to have four vizslas in a confined space, look no further.

While we are hardly as fancy as the Upper West Side, our two Bronx-siders know how to show a couple of visiting vizslas a good time in the woods. There was running, jumping, chewing sticks, wrestling, more running, trying to decipher the graffiti and avoiding the crazy guys on the mini-bikes. And they even let Brisztow claim one of our logs as her own sovereign domain. She seemed quite pleased with herself.

Brizstow is a cutey -- and Baxter quite the handsome fellow, too. (Incidentally, Brizstow is just a month older than Momo and Baxter just a month younger than Jozsi.) This great pic is courtesy of Karen, Brisztow's mom, and is (I believe) mostly of Baxter's crazy, monster-mouth as he runs from one human to another to another vizsla and then another.

Now I need to get the boys some formal wear so we can go return the visit and hit Central Park. Sadly, I don't think their new blaze skidplates will qualify.

Training updates: Momo and I did a bunch of blind retrieves today with a juiced up quail. I was deliberately lobbing the quail either into piles of leaves or over the other side of a log so that Momo could track the trajectory of the bird, but not see its final resting place. There was no hesitation this time at all, and so he would head out and then nose around looking for the bird till he found it. He seems to be getting confident in himself -- which was the goal. We'll do it a couple more times before Sunday when we head up to the TMT Preserve to get some actual hunting practice in. I know it's just another picture of Momo with a quail in his mouth, but it was today's quail -- and I am proud of him.