"think harmony with dogs"

As folks who read this blog know, while I have been blessed with the external success that comes with good dogs earning titles and ribbons, I am still struggling to get The Mominator's feet absolutely still while he is in a 'stay' (or when I walk up to flush a bird when he is on point).

I have been doing a little yardwork every day -- and sometimes he is a dream. Other times he will step as I walk up to him to pet him; other times, he will step because he thinks he's going to get a treat. Part of my general approach has been trying to minimize the negative pressure and, instead, upping the positive reward -- whether in the form of a biscuit treat or stroking his back. And I am embarrassed to say that this very-quickly learned behavior (of expecting a treat) drives me bats*&^t -- because he clearly understands what he was supposed to do, and is therefore trying to preempt his reward. This is a similar behavior to his creepy feet on point -- he wants to try and preempt the reward that comes from retrieving a bird. In the case of his recent yardwork, I am embarrassed to say that I have lost my temper -- it's not like I'm beating him, but I hate to raise my voice and I hate to see his anxiety come when I can't control my own frustration. And I know it is primarily a frustration with myself, for the inability to communicate that (ironically) all I want is for him to do nothing when he's stopped.

However, I have been trying to internalize some of the advice of legendary horseman, Ray Hunt, who sadly recently passed away. And so, following my line of trying to be honest about my mistakes in the hope that others might not make them, I share some of Ray's wisdom from his book Think Harmony With Horses (1978):

"When you ask your horse to do something it should be his idea... As you work with your horse, see how much of this is the horse's idea, or how much of it is your idea and if he is forced into it. If he's not forced into it, you'll see a great attitude. Your idea should become his idea, and when it does, then there will be no drag." (pp. 1-2)

"The way to do it is to work on yourself, to recognize and understand the situation... You make the wrong things difficult and the right things easy as you adjust to fit the situation. If the rider is alert and aware and in a learning frame of mind, the horse can be the same." (p. 2)

Ray outlines some great examples for how to put a horse in training 'in a bind' -- to make doing the wrong thing more difficult -- and then giving it an opening -- to make the right thing easy, as if it were the horse's own idea. The challenge, of course, is that standing still is not something that comes entirely naturally to either a domesticated prey (horse) or predator (dog) species. But reading Ray later in the book talking about anticipating a horse's move gives me some new ways to think about how to undo what is a minimally two-year learned behavior for The Mominator. For example, though, I realize that Momo loves to retrieve almost as much as he loves food -- and he knows that he can't break when a bird is thrown (or shot) out in front of him. So I have been making him stop and stand still for his dinner -- and, in an effort to reward his keeping his head faced forward even when I'm close to him, tossing a frozen quail from 2' behind him and making him stand to go get it.

And it reminds me that I need to be willing to learn -- arguably more so than to teach.

numerous highlights

It's been a busy two weeks here at the Regal Vizsla -- and I am looking forward to summer so I can hopefully recover a little!

First of all, we had our Connecticut Valley Vizsla Club Spring horseback field-trial up at Flaherty Field. This is the second year I have been on the organizing committee and it makes a huge difference to be part of an experienced team, all focused on keeping a busy event running smoothly. Which was entirely necessary bearing in mind we had 150 starters to run -- including folks from as far south as VA and as far north as Ontario. I had entered both my dogs, as much as anything to reward them for their patience -- and to see how each of them was progressing. Momo will likely never be a field-trial contender, but he is also no boot-licker and he loves to run in front of a horse; Jozsi is a locomotive who I wanted to see how his tail was coming along and whether he was developing patience; I had also offered to run Ottla in both Amateur Walking Puppy and Open Puppy to see how she, too, was coming along.

In short, I had a ball with Momo -- he was one happy dog, got his 30mins in, had two clean finds, and slept like a baby. Jozsi had roughly 12mins of glory: in which time, he had explored most of the backfield and Tobacco Row, and had two finds -- the second of which was a fur + feather combo. Sadly, as I was conferring with the judge as to how much effort he needed me to make on his second find -- a clearly visible, wet bird -- Jozsi decided to take three or four steps. And so, he came to understand the vital lesson that a dog with fancy feet becomes a dope on a rope -- and his big happy running comes to an end. With two others of her littermates present, it was interesting to note that Ottla's desire to play with her bracemate appears to be a characteristic of her litter. She has fantastic ground-speed and threw a wicked point on a hotspot during her AWP run -- but in both stakes was too easily distracted by the other handler's whistle and would then run with her bracemate. This is hardly terrible news, that a 7mos old might not be quite able to distinguish between a bracemate and a playmate, but it would have been great to see her apply herself fully forward.

I spent the first two days almost entirely on a horse -- Travis, to be exact -- planting birds. While even a good wrangler's horse like Travis can be a pain sometimes when it comes to planting birds, he and I spent 25braces together in the first two days. My own personal highlights from the first two days were watching Greg Ritching's Huck win the OLGD stake (Huck also won the OGD stake and finished his FC) and Dave Pomfret's setter, Specter, take 2nd in the All-Age. By the time Sunday came around, I was slated to run my two dogs, Ottla in OP, and to help my field-trial fairy godmother, Joan Heimbach, as her scout and horse-tender while she ran her two dogs, Octane and Geena, in both the AGD and ALGD stakes. And it had started to rain. The dust of the first two days became the mudfest of the third. I get almost as much enjoyment out of supporting Joan in my role as 'chair-man' as she does continuing to run her own dogs from a horse -- although by Sunday afternoon, trying to figure out how to hold her dog, hold her horse, get the mounting stool and give her a boost while standing in sloppy mud was making me feel like a contortionist. Happily, I had arranged to borrow Larry the Wonderhorse from my friend, Kim, for the day... a horse who will happily stand still in one spot with his reins dropped while guns are fired and birds are flushed. And as frosting, Geena took 3rd in AGD! This picture is of my lovely Whites boots (complete with some lovely spur straps from my friend, Kent, at Snow Canyon Outfitters) trying to recover from the slop.

*******

In other news, we headed up to Cape Cod this past weekend to attend the Mayflower GSP Club hunt test at Crane WMA. I was scheduled to finish up my SH/MH apprenticeship on the Saturday and then run Momo in MH on Sunday. It was great to meet up with a bunch of old friends -- Jeff +Val, Bill, Manny + Steph, Mike + Kim -- and have a nice time camping out. I love the grounds at Crane and was especially grateful to Jen + Dennis for bringing their horses over to the grounds so we could run the two hotshots, Jozsi and Tucker, once the hunt tests were done.

And it was a real pleasure to watch the two youngsters rip out for the edges. Jozsi held it together for two finds (the second of which had Tucker backing like a champ), interspersed with an honor of his own, before lighting out for the horizon, skidding to a halt, and then taking steps on a running quail. At least he stopped to flush... and then became a dope on a rope once again. I have a training plan for both boys that starts tomorrow.

It was a good weekend for friends and their dogs: Kyler earned her third MH leg, Cedar his second and third SH legs, Raven earned two legs of her SH, Kevin Smith's Clay earned another JH leg, and Jose Roman's Heidi earned a couple more JH legs. And Momo earned his fifth MH leg... and so, pending official AKC recognition, he is henceforth to be known as Widdershins Momchil MH VC.

I love this dog, as stubborn as he can be. There would be no Regal Vizsla blog, no two-dog box in the truck, no trips to Maine to chase grouse, or trips to VA to watch other people's red-dogs run, no chaps, spurs, and Packer boots, and so many other things without this dog. He has his flaws, but his strength of character and the strength of his genes have meant that we were both able to get this far together. And while thanks certainly go to all the judges who watched him run and saw all the great things about him, here's a raised glass to 'The Mominator.'

trying to keep momentum

We had another lovely day to train this past Wednesday -- and this time around we had just my two monsters and Her Majesty, Broad Run's Ottilie of Red Oak, aka. Ottla. This first pic is from her first run of the morning and you can see how nice she is starting to look. Her parents keep her in great shape and she is really starting to establish a nice long style to her point.

For the past week or so, I have gone back to 'barrel' training with The Mominator -- although using a roughly 18" x 24" Rubbermaid storage tub as the barrel. It's small enough and light enough that he can't move any of his feet without tipping off -- and I have been both flushing and flying birds on tethers in front of him, as well as asking him to retrieve from it on command. I gather the use of either flat boards or carpet squares are used to much the same purpose in the retriever world. In any case, this was going to be his first time trying to take that lesson and applying it in the field. As with every piece of yardwork, making the transition from the backyard to the actual birdfield is the challenge -- how to help the dog transfer the learning from one situation to another.

Ottla's mom, Annabella, was kind enough to serve as training assistant for me, carrying my new favorite training accessory -- the lid off the Rubbermaid tub. In any case, the trick was to help Momo remember that while he wasn't perched on top of said tub, the expectation was the same. To summarize all his birdwork: each time he went on point, where possible, I picked up his front legs, stood them on the lid, then worked the bird -- coming back to praise him each time he did it well. Over the morning, he probably worked seven birds in this manner. Not quite perfect, but definitely better. (Although as you will read, that only solved half the problem so far.)

Jozsi is a work in progress -- but I'm hoping that I've turned a corner. And his wagging tail might be developmental after all. The previous week a friend had suggested telling him to relocate once he was on a bird but wagging his tail. And I tried that a couple of times while I was still coming up to him and he bumped the bird both times. On two other occasions, he also saw a bird in flight and chased it -- catching the first one. Thank heavens a) I don't have him in an e-collar, but b) had the presence of mind to tell him to bring me the bird (albeit in an angry tone). Which he did. That he would retrieve in a stressful situation is still a positive -- and reassuring that his retrieve while deliberately infrequently practiced on birds is probably more reliable than I think it is. But I think that by asking him to relocate I was just confusing him.

As you can see in this picture, we did try waiting out his tail a couple of times, too, which did work -- but seems to address a symptom not a cause. After he chased the second bird, though, and refused to leave it and come around, he got some old-time religion. I pinned his sorry ass on the ground and let him know I was not pleased. Nothing especially rough, but the message was clear and we got back to business.

And his next two birds were perfect, tail and all. Bizarre. Which is what makes me wonder if, in a much broader sense, this is developmental and he needed his ass kicked, metaphorically speaking. (That doesn't mean that that he hasn't also gotten confused messages from me and others which were contributing to the problem.) In any case, I also remembered that when I did barrel work ('tubwork') with him before, his tail never flagged. And so he has joined Momo, albeit on a bigger bench, getting birds flushed in front of him and flown around his head.

As ever, Ottla is the panacea to all the hard work that my two present me with. I wanted to take her round a relatively long set of edges to see if she'd be a little bolder and really hook on to the wind and the cover edge. The answer is 'not yet' -- but she is certainly an animated pup and most definitely a hunting dog. When she did get a bird in flight and chased it, I also fired my pistol at the point she was roughly 5yds away. By her second run, there was clearly no trepidation on her part.

As you can see from the pics, her tail set is getting a little higher -- and she's letting me style it higher when I can get there. The flipped ear seems to have been a theme for this time out! I forget which picture it is, but I was genuinely impressed by her willingness to stand a bird in plain sight -- now she may not have seen it when she first stacked up, but she sure as heck did after it started running away. It's a good sign though that her second instinct was not to merely break and rip it out.

Birds definitely fire her up though -- and by her second run, even though she'd already worked both sides of the hedgerow and had somewhere close to 5 or 6 finds, she was eager to keep going despite a couple of thorns to the face. This final pic is neat because Annabella managed to capture the bird in flush while Ottla stands in the thorns and brambles.

*******

This past Sunday up at the CNEBC hunt test in Belchertown, MA, Momo was the recipient of some kind judging and passed his fourth MH leg. One more to go. But he was still creeping a little once I got up to him: however, I learned two more things.

• Let the judge judge your dog -- meaning that it is the judge's job to assess whether your dog is good enough to qualify in the test, not you. You might have a higher expectation for your dog and you may even be a qualified MH judge -- but on that given day, it is your job as your dog's handler to concentrate on getting the best from him.
• On that note, one judge was kind enough to point out to me that in a couple of those instances that he appeared to be taking small steps it was because, in his opinion, I, as the handler, was actually kicking cover into his face.

He did a great job in some awkward circumstances - a bracemate who had just qualified into MH the day before and who, through his own handler's error, ended up in an honoring situation where he couldn't actually see Momo and so, being a Senior dog, when the bird was flushed and shot, he went to retrieve it. And so poor Momo needed to find another bird of his own. He and I were then sent to the Outer Mongolia section of the birdfield while another bird was procured and his bracemate set up on point for him to honor. So, he did all those things and actually held steady on birds that were running around very close to his head.

*******

And so I have now transitioned Momo to the ground in our backyard, putting a stick in front of his front paws, in part so that he sees a barrier, in part so I have a clear visual marker. The best part is that he now has room to set up in one of his nice long points -- which in turn means that the real villains in his creepy feet technique are more obvious... his back legs. I felt bad for him because I could see him trying so very hard not to move -- but a dog that never makes a mistake, never gets a correction, and as a result doesn't also get a clear picture of what isn't acceptable.

I'll keep working him like this and hopefully he'll realize exactly what I want and how much love he's going to get when he does. Wish us luck for #5!

puppy brilliance...

It's been a busy few weeks for the Regal Vizsla -- and I apologize for not keeping the blog as up-to-date as I probably should. To summarize: we've had two more training dates with the puppies, one successful hunt test performance, one not-so-much, and two judging assignments.

*******

Regarding The Mominator and his run to complete his Master Hunter (MH) title, we went out to the Long Island GSP Club hunt test out on the island two weekends ago. It was the first time going to the Otis Pike Preserve area and I was pleasantly surprised. While I could have napalmed the entire place to eliminate the tick population (and no, the winter didn't kill the little bastards), that's a nice grounds for a hunt test -- too too tight, enough open space to see a dog actually hunt, and a good-sized shooting field. It was a low-entry test and Momo was the only MH dog registered -- which meant that we needed to find him a suitable bracemate. Fortunately, Steve Anker showed up with one of his older dogs, Grits, and gave Momo something pretty to honor. All I can really say about his run was that he had an honor and a stop-to-flush in the backcourse, then a second honor and a retrieve to hand in the birdfield. He has been looking so nice recently and when he went on point for his bird, one of the judges said he wished he'd brought his camera. His reward was being asked back immediately to run as a bye-dog for one of the SH dogs. Three down, two more to go.

His performance at the ISCNE hunt test up at Sugarbrook was a little too short. But the lesson learned is this: you might be an amateur, but act like a professional. This is to say that in the AKC rulebook there is no definition of what a 'flushed bird' is. Some folks would argue that the bird has to take flight, others that it at least leave the ground briefly, others that if you've made a couple of genuine efforts, a visibly running bird is still sufficient; you have, after all, now produced the bird to demonstrate that your dog is pointing for a reason. The point being that if you've made genuine efforts to flush a bird that will not fly, whether by choice, injury, or exhaustion, then you might contemplate firing your gun before the bird ends up running underneath your dog and potentially causing a trainwreck. If the judge hasn't said anything or asked for more work from you beforehand, you might consider putting them in the position of deciding whether it was enough work rather than waiting for their benediction.

*******

We have had a couple of great training outings with Ottla, her brother Murphy, and for this past week, another puppy, Nugget. I know Nugget because his father, Octane, belongs to my field-trialing fairy godmother, Joan Heimbach. (Rod Michaelson had the opportunity to meet Joan out at the Pacific Vizsla Futurity at the Kistler Ranch in Jamestown, CA.) We had actually gotten together with Nugget (who is now unofficially referred to as 'the Beastie') after the LIGSP hunt test and given him a couple of birds to get excited about.

In any event, it really is a joy to watch puppies dig deep on their genetic heritage and begin to look like bird-dogs. All three are coming along really nicely -- and after only two or three times on birds beginning to develop both hunting sense and style. All three dogs established points, some longer than others, and all three dogs went off the beaten patch to find birds in spots that they had previously flushed to.

Murphy has had the least exposure to birds, merely twice so far -- but is a very biddable dog who has already figured out that quail will head for dense cover to escape aerial predators. We broke him away for his second run and he immediately doubled back into the wind and produced this point and several others as the small covey of a half-dozen birds dispersed themselves. If it's not clear, these are evil brambles only turned away by the likes of Filson Double-Tin chaps. To see a young dog not merely point, but then pursue quail into nasty, pointy stuff like this is a great sign of drive.

Where Murphy and Ottla are 7 mos old, Nugget is still not quite 6mos old. When I saw him last out on the island, he was already using his nose and to find birds and was clearly interested, but maybe not excited per se. Since then, he has had another bird session with the folks of the Long Island Vizsla Club -- and I had already heard legend of his prowess in taking down flushing quail. In part because he is still a young man growing into his body (and in addition to his feet being huge, he is also bigger-boned than both Murphy and his sister), his general application is a little subdued. But get a bird flushing in front of him and he is off to take it down and bring it back. As you can see in this picture, he has a nice long, solid tail that should unfurl and firm up nicely as he grows up.

Ottla is beginning to look like a young bird-dog, as opposed to a pointing puppy. She is so very deliberate in her points -- and as you can see, she has a lovely top-line and her tail is becoming more emphatic. Her parents have already been bitten by the bug and so Ottla will be running in both the AWP and OP stakes at the CVVC Spring field trial in three weeks. (Nugget will be, too, but his mother will be running him in the AWP stake; we're still working on Murphy's mom.) With that in mind, we're also working on building her focus and encouraging her to run cover ahead of me in search of birds. And so we set up four birds along a long line of sorghum to draw her out and keep her attention. We have also been keeping an eye on her intensity to see if she's ready to begin formal gunfire exposure. After her first run on Wednesday taken at high speed and with great efficiency, we decided that Mario, her father, would stand in the middle of the field some 30+yds away and, on my signal, fire the blank pistol once she was chasing. In short, she showed no signs of even acknowledging that a shot had been fired.

For her final pass, we set out a couple of birds on the sorghum strip then a final one all the way across the open field -- in short, requiring her to come with me, stay focused, and then (hopefully) be rewarded with a final bird. I should also say that after two weeks of using blue scaled quail, we were using bobwhite quail this time around. Where the scalies seemed eager to run, the bobwhite tend to hunker down a little more -- and so we were planting birds rather than using the releasers that we had previously. I mention this because after she arced across the field in front of me, Ottla blew past the spot we had planted the final bird and then pointed at a thicket of the purple nasties. It was great to see both her faith in me in crossing the field and her faith in her nose in finding a wandering bird.

Her education will continue tomorrow. I am headed up to bird-plant for the Nutmeg GSP club field-trial at Flaherty and Ottla is coming up with her parents to run after the trial is over. I've arranged to borrow a horse to run her, Mominator-X, and Mr. Enthusiasm so they can all get back in a horseback frame of mind.

*******

As you can maybe make out in this final picture, Mr, Enthusiasm suffered a long, shallow cut on one of his main pads and is currently bombing around the countryside in his Lewis boots. They are a bit of a pain to put on, but we've gotten into a routine with Jozsi and he now understands that they are a necessary prelude for him to run big. Coupled with Tuf-Foot after every run (which we apply while he's eating), his feet are recovering nicely.

You will also see that he is no longer wearing his e-collar for birdwork. As I've written here before, I don't know what I did (if anything) to have him wag his tail when he's on point (but not after you get in front of him), but if I did something with the e-collar then I'm going to take it out the equation for now. We've done a fair amount of groundwork with his pinch collar and a checkcord that I feel comfortable with him standing his birds properly. And so, now I am also trying to be patient and once I know he can see me in his periphery, I stop. And when his tail stops I start walking in; if it starts again, I stop. This seemed to work well on Wednesday. Hopefully we can get him all the way back.

what we did in school today...

Last weekend, we got invited to go up to Flaherty to join a group of friends who were running a 'mock horseback trial' training session. Heaven knows, any excuse to ride a decent horse and chase a decent dog is a good one for me.

Besides my two, the only other red dog was Stephanie's Rye -- all the rest were GSPs. I wanteed to give Momo the chance to get used to be running from a horse because I thought he'd enjoy it -- and he ended up braced with Baldur, my friend Kim's biiiig-running dog. In terms of run, Baldur has it in spades -- but the box score at the end of the day was the same: one divided find, one honor, and one find each. But I swear that Momo was running with a smile on his face. We need to do this again. He may never be a trial dog like his brother, but he is certainly enjoying himself.

Mr. Enthusiasm ended up braced with Jen + Dennis's Tucker. There aren't many dogs that I enjoy watching as much as my own crazy man, but Tucker is one of them. We were in for a footrace. The wind must have been fishtailing something fierce because none of the dogs I saw run ran quite the long, linear race that you might expect. But Leadbelly and Mr. Enthusiasm found birds. The first picture is of Jozsi high and tight on a running pair in The Pines. He had two more finds, including one on an obviously running bird that often provokes him into getting in after it. He looked great. This second picture is of Tucker -- he's a good looking boy with some nice manners for a young dog. (These pictures are courtesy of Jen, by the way.)

*******

Yesterday, we took the boys and the lovely Ottla up to do some more birdwork and get her used to being handled. I am grateful to Ottla's mom, Annabella, for taking these pictures -- and especially this one of me and The Mominator. As you can imagine, it's tricky trying to get pictures of yourself with your own dogs while they're actually working. In case folks are wondering, while I am wearing my blank pistol, I am carrying my shotgun. One of things I've realised -- and I might have gotten this suggestion from Don Brown at Dobrocat Vizslas -- is that Momo tends to creep a little when you get in front of him, and especially when you have a shotgun in your hands. Completely geeked to retrieve, he is anticipating the flush. And so I am carrying the shotgun and asked Ottla's dad, Mario, to carry my other one to simulate a shooting party. And we didn't shoot a single bird, merely blanked them with the shotgun. Between these kinds of drills and working him each morning with the pinch collar, I'm hoping we can get his feet a lot steadier by the end of the month.

But of course, the highlight was watching Ottla figure out how to be a bird-dog. We're using blue scaled quail (because it's what was available) whose initial tendency as primarily grassland quail is to run rather than fly. My own preference is also to use fully alert quail, rather than sleep them up so they're groggy and don't act like birds -- and so we've been putting her birds out in releasers in likely spots and turning her out. This week though, I offered to teach her to breakaway and to begin handling her -- with the goal of demonstrating how Mario and Annabella can handle her in the future -- and also to give her the clear cue that me and and her orange flash collar = birds = fun.

And after some modeling from The Mominator and Mr. Enthusiasm, she seemed to clearly understand that a certain whistle cue meant to get her running legs on and come with me. (In a side note, she almost ran over a woodcock which flushed as soon as she passed. It's nice to see the mudbats back in the neighborhood even if they're just passing.) She had worked one sorghum strip looking for a bird we had slept slightly (but which had moved on), clearly find the spot it had been placed and filling her nostrils. Then she cut ahead and through the cut in the hedgerow and locked up on the bird hidden in the sorghum on the far, downwind side. She held nicely till I got to within about three feet, then stalked a step, pointed, stalked, and then leapt in for the bird which got up and flew nicely and was pursued by a happy vizsla.

Having just done some research, she and my two boys are remotely related having several common great-grandparents. But it is also clear that she looks like her momma, Blaze, especially here on point. It's great to see a young dog begin to drawn down on her genetic coding and pick up on the game.

the next generation

Phew wheee! Never got round to writing the second part of our Ukraine travelogue... the part with the mummified monk fingers, belly dancers, and trying not to spontaneously burst into flames for being a heathen. Sorry. You'll just have to extrapolate.

Other folks have been writing some nice things that led me to ponder how on earth I ended up with a pick-up truck full of dogs, guns, and training supplies -- a truck I don't commute in, but somehow still end up putting 12,000miles on a year. This is a small figure to some, but this is the northeast. And so while this post is titled for the folks that get us started in this funny bird-dog game, it should probably be dedicated to my wife who indulges me in my odd obsession (and keeps our dogs fit).

The National Championship for Field-Trialing Bird Dogs is finally over despite (and I quote Brad Harter's official synopsis) several days of "brutal conditions." And the winner is Carl Bowman's In the Shadow ('Buster'). The New York Times ran a nice story on the Championships which concluded with this absolutely fabulous quote: “I told the old gentleman who started me in this sport 40 years ago that it probably would have been better to give me a gram of cocaine because then I could have done my time in prison,” said Larry Garner, an amateur bird dog field trialer from Dallas. “I could have gone through rehab and become a productive citizen again instead of being addicted to bird dogs and chasing them all over the United States and Canada.” Amen.

As for my own perverse addiction, I'd like to thank Stephanie Gutierrez for awarding Jozsi his first blue ribbon -- and have already been informed that she has no intention of running her new pup in any field trials. So not fair. But I think I will have my revenge before the end of the month: while Steph will get to judge The Mominator once more, I will get to judge her and the lovely Rye at the same hunt test! I should also say that amongst many others, Joan Heimbach has been my particular fairy godmother of field trialing. Thank you.

And while she is primarily talking about horsemanship, Gin at High Mountain Horse has a great post asking those of us in the current generation to 'pass it on' to the next. I couldn't agree more. -- and as you'll read, I'm trying to do my part. Holly at NorCal Cazadora asks another poignant question about the dangers of assuming that those of us who enjoy hunting and fishing (and I would suggest even the not-necessarily-lethal kinds of sporting dog events) will be able to do so in perpetuity. Personally, I hate the idea of legislating to protect the future -- but when faced by the slick, but frankly disingenuous, campaigns of folks like the HSUS, perhaps we need to. As Mike Spies at Living with Birddogs notes, there is a new force in the blogosphere dedicated to tracking these jackasses.

I, on the other hand, have become hairy godfather to a couple of new puppies from our friend, Michelle's most recent litter. How two dogs from Virginia end up in New York City seems a little strange, but they have. We haven't had a chance to get Murphy on birds yet, although that moment will hopefully be soon. But The Mominator and Mr. Enthusiasm did get to meet Ottla today -- and she got to rendezvous with some quail.

Even with first birds, I prefer to have the dog use its nose to find a bird -- rather than merely deposit a bird in front of it in clear view -- and so we dispersed a handful of birds in a feedstrip to see how she managed. The first couple of birds literally either ran away from her (because she was still in potter mode, wondering what was different about this particular walk) or flushed behind her -- and while she never saw them go, she buried her nose intently in the hotspots they'd left clearly trying to make sense of this new, strangely exciting smell. And then launched into a different gear.

As you might imagine, even with a small bird like a quail, having it launch in your face can be a little daunting -- and so with her next three flushes she sank onto her back legs a little as the bird took off before heading off after it to much praise from the gallery. Besides the focus in her face in chasing the quail in flight, the best part of the picture at the top comes from the understanding that she has watched the bird flush, then land, and then start running through the brambles. In at least two cases, she headed off after the bird, performed a several-yard serpentine ground track and then boosted the bird into the air.

We had initially run the three dogs together before any birdwork -- and put Jozsi in his hauling rig and cables to really wear him out and work on his conditioning. I should mention that at one point Ottla saw Momo standing ahead of her and immediately stopped and didn't start moving till he did. She didn't know he wasn't pointing, but a natural honor is a lovely thing to see.

Then once Ottla was done with her first five birds and had scattered them to the wind, I put down each of my two. The Mominator had a nice run of his own posting three genuinely impressive finds on quail running in deep cover -- and with nice steady feet; Jozsi had four finds of his own, impressive bar the second where he decided to chase a running bird in the open. I realise this is one of Momo's weaknesses, too, so I will need to start proofing for that over the next couple of weeks as well.

Stay posted.

Not just for chicken...

Continuing our tradition of spending Valentine’s Day in a post-Soviet country, Meg and I decided to take a week’s vacation in the Ukraine. As with our recent trips to Mongolia, we are lucky to have family members to visit – this time, Meg’s brother, John. But unlike Mongolia, and while John does speak Russian fluently, my wife also has a working knowledge of the language giving us a little more independence.

We’re also lucky that Kiev appears to be a pretty walkable city, even in the winter, even when clearing the sidewalks seems to be an afterthought. And so we’ve been able to take several good walks to take in some of the sights near John’s apartment. (This first picture is looking from the belltower of Saint Sophia down to Saint Michael's.)

Despite the German bombardment and bloody occupation of the city during WW2, itself sandwiched between a Soviet architectural style never known for its grace, downtown Kiev seems surprisingly pretty. There are certainly points of the city that seem to be in the state of practiced dilapidation that we’ve seen in Mongolia and Kazakhstan – and a similar number of tall, construction cranes on the skyline. However, unlike either of those places, a fair number of these cranes are actually working.

The downtown architecture does have a continental feeling to it – in no small part because a fair amount of the downtown buildings were built by Italian architects. The Cathedral of St. Andrew, for example, seen here was designed and built in an Italian Baroque architectural style by Bartolomeo Rastrelli.

Underneath all of this, literally, lies a much older city. The Cathedral of Saint Andrew, for example, is located on the spot that the Apostle Andrew legendarily predicted as the site for a great Christian city. As soon as you step inside the Saint Sophia Cathedral, you realize that in addition to the various layers of 18th, 19th, and 20thC restoration there are also still sections of 11thC stucco work. Saint Sophia is unusual (like the Gandan monastery in Ulan Bataar) in that in it was preserved during the Soviet era as a museum – left perhaps ostensibly as a monument to pre-communist degeneracy, but sentimentally I imagine because even the most cynical Party member couldn’t quite bring himself to level the incredible beauty of a sanctuary like Saint Sophia.

Where Saint Sophia is a museum, the remainder of the churches we’ve visited are all active as places of devotion. Like Saint Sofia, Saint Michael’s is an entire monastic complex with monks’ cells and a secondary chapel (dedicated to St. John and which seems primitive by contrast with its wooden shingled dome); Saint Andrew and Saint Vladimir are ‘merely’ stand-alone churches. And just incredibly gorgeous.

There is some speculation that the reason the Kievan Rus converted to the Eastern Orthodox church was because of Prince Vladmir's evoys' visit to the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul in the 10thC and their proclamation that "we knew not whether we were in heaven or earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss to describe it." Saint Vladimir is the only church we’ve been to that permits photography (albeit for a small fee) and, while I have always been fascinated by Orthodox icons. (I should ask my parents whether we visited Kykkos or another monastery when I was a boy, but I do remember being drawn to the religious painting there.) But, and as Sharon Gerstel noted in an exhibition catalog review, to only see these icons out of context on a gallery wall is to miss a huge amount: "Within a church, the icons would have evoked a different response. There, flickering candles or lamps enliven the holy faces, and the wooden panels on which they are rendered emit the pungent smell of incense. Within the darkened church the figures, set on a gold background, appear to wrench free from the strict confines of their wooden backing." Hopefully these pictures convey some of the glimmering majesty of these places.

On a technical note, all these pictures were taken on our new point-and-shoot. We really liked our old Panasonic Lumix (which simply wore out) and decided to go with another, this time the DMC-FX580. I mention this only because I'm still experimenting with some of the shooting modes (of which there are many). The first interior picture, for example, was taken in a mode called 'Candlelight'. It has a a nice grainy B&W mode, and another called 'Pinhole' which puts an interesting fuzzy frame around the image. Stay posted.