dedicated to the lovely Redgirls

We hope that the Redgirls are having an incredibly successful 'big game season' -- which is why we haven't heard so much from them. But we had our own season opener on H. vulgaris recently and managed to snap a couple of pictures.

We had a sharp turn to the cold in the last week and so the haggi have been coveying up. We found this pair -- a red-phase and a green-phase -- at the base of a large tree. Jozsi, as ever, went in directly to try and sniff them out. They were not eager to flush, at all. The second picture is of me repeating the oft-quoted adage amongst serious stalkers -- a haggis in hand is worth two in the bush -- to a bemused Momo. He seemed to doubt whether this particular red-phase met the minimum 16oz limit.

*******

In other news: Jozsi and I headed down to Flemington, NJ, for the Vizsla Club of Northern New Jersey field trial to run in another Open Derby. By the time Jozsi ran -- about 10:30am, it had gotten to a whopping 30degsF and the wind was gusting at 20+mph. He ran like a maniac, but found no birds. And so he couldn't place. That's the short version.

But I did handle him from horseback for the first time and after the first ten minutes or so once he figured out which bundled-up fool I was and who to look for, he ran huge. Both judges and the marshal complimented him on how well he ran -- I think they really wanted to him to find a bird. Sadly, at a critical point, the other handler got ahead of me and took the line I had hoped for -- and found a bird there. So, Mr. 200mph ran great, hunted hard, but came up short. I was still really pleased with him for how well he adapted to the new terrain, to the crappy weather, and to dad hollering from on high -- spring trialing will be a lot of fun.

Now, we're looking forward to the CVVC Walking Trial in early December. I got bold and entered Jozsi in both Amateur and Open Derby. I'm fairly confident he has sufficient engine capacity to run twice in one day!

*******

For those of you wondering whether you can bring a hard hunting pointing dog into your lives, here's a nice pic courtesy of Bob from our trip to Maine. The only thing you can't quite make out is that I'm actually squatting, not kneeling. I don't even remember why I decided to squat down, but the next thing I knew, Momo had snuck up and was perched on my thigh. Who can refuse love like that?

*******

In the 'real world' of bloggery:
a) MDMNM on Sometimes Far Afield has a nice post on 'Hunting in the Digital Age'.
b) NorCalCazadora has a nice post on the recent election and 'Barack Obama, Hunting, and You.' The piece is interesting and Holly's efforts to moderate the comments are, to my mind, applaudable.
c) The folks at SmartDogs have a interesting post on honey as a topical dressing for minor wounds in both humans and dogs. Geezum, you'd need to put an Elizabethan collar on me to stop licking that off a dog.
d) For those of you who just adopted a new puppy (and I know a bunch of you), here's some critical advice from Luisa at Lassie Get Help!.