glory in defeat

Despite our mixed results, and in honor of my two boys and one of our favorite friends (and to keep the ballet in The Regal Vizsla), George Balanchine said that "A ballet is a movement in time and space, a living moment."

The irony, perhaps, of working with pointing dogs is that arguably the most vital moments are when they are standing, locked-up, still. Here are a couple of pictures courtesy of Jen, Sally's mom, from Saturday's run at the Katahdin GSP Hunt Test. Yes, we did end up braced with Sally even though she was being judged at the MH level and Momo was being judged at the SH level -- because I had been cross-scheduled and Sally was the odd dog out -- and needed a bracemate. And this is Sally pulling another lovely point.

The second picture is of me and Momo. In SH, once a dog has honored its bracemate, the handler can hold their dog by the collar while the other dog hopefully gets to retrieve its bird. Even though he knows it's Sally's bird, you can see the intensity and focus in his eyes while she takes care of business. From both pictures you get a sense of how much foliage there was in bloom -- and therefore how much extra scent the dogs were trying to sift through.

In honor of all the glorious red dogs, here is a great picture from the Vizsla Club of Central New England Fun Day lifted directly from Neil + Lael's blog. I get giddy looking at all those Hungarian super-dogs in one place. Kim of ForestKingVizslas is not only the current president of the club, but also organized this year's event. She has her own post about the event here. Looks like people and dogs had a great time as a result of her hard work! (And it was probably more fun than being mosquito and tick food like we were.)