On Mountain Time

 

Too busy having fun; so no updates for a while until we have a report from the Big Sky Field Trial Club's Montana Open Shooting Dog Championship in Circle, August 17-23.

Setters in Blue

Maximus is growing at an alarming rate - can you tell who's who in this picture? He'll soon be taller than me, Mingus, and he's definitely got a very finely honed bird finding instinct. Too bad he's mostly finding crows and magpies, but this morning he did discover a pheasant in the reeds before I caught his scent. Maximus suddenly went all quiet, froze, fixing his attention on the bird, and our human responded mirroring his pose, honoring his moment. There we stood, transfixed by the god of setting hounds, happy, the pheasant all quiet too. Then a movement broke the spell and the bird flew off in a flurry of feathers.
Tomorrow we'll be at Långtora where pheasants are aplenty, and Maximus will be taught how to raise birds on command, crouch until told to fetch the game, and how to make best use of the wind. Ah, the pleasures of puppyhood!

Setters modeling Cheny & Friends collars

Aren't we magnificent? Our human found us these smart and very comfortable collars, handmade in Germany by Cheny & Friends. Maximus will need to grow and fill out a bit but my collar fits snugly, made-to-measure as it is.

Birthday Setter

three-year-old with toys

       

Enter Maximus

Today is Valentine's Day and it is indeed a day of love! I have a new friend, setter puppy Maximus has joined our pack. He is still young, but already true to his breed - yesterday we went for a long walk across the snow clad fields, and Maximus kept up with us. Snow- and ice crystals coated his fur and clogged his feet, but he just curled up in the snow like a little fox and bit off the snowballs, then continued running with us. My human picked him up at one point to carry him, but Maximus wriggled and made it very clear that he wanted to run with us. That's the spirit!

Back home he collapsed and was dead to the world, but I know we'll have lots of fun. My human thinks of herself as a runner, and I'm far too polite to let on that I can outrun her without half trying (but then again she only has two legs where I have four). So Maximus' presence is welcome, and I'm sure he's going to grow into an amazing bird hunter, following my example.

Setter on ice

Ah, what a lovely Sunday morning! Early morning walk round the block followed by cheese bun at Gateaux, and then when the sun was making patterns on the floor, we went for a walk on the ice.

Grandma came along, so I was on my best behavior (she cannot run as fast as I and i made a point of returning to her regularly to make sure she's all right).

Ah, but how I ran! Across the ice, making the snow veer around me, and on the sound of the whistle I was slipping and sliding before I came to a halt. A piece of sausage came my way - "Off you go!" and then the two familiar sounds calling me back, more slipping and sliding, another piece of sausage. This is fun, one of my favorite games. At first we were alone on the ice, but then more and more people, most of them with dogs, appeared, and I had a chat with my hero Nelson and with Nova, and a lovely cafe latte colored saluki bitch - she loves to run just like I do, and is a new resident here, what happiness!

The superdog's family

                                                                                                                                                                               This is Mojo, the Pixie Bob. He's my legend cat, and a real blue-blooded royalty since his bloodline goes back to the legendary Pixie, a barn cat who mated with a bobtail. This is why Mojo looks like a lynx - big paws with thumbs, and the typical coloring. Mojo is a sweetheart and never misses to kiss me when he passes by. He's supposed to be  is an indoor cat but likes to go for walks down to the seaside, and in summer he joins us on the jetty when we go swimming. Once he caught a snake and brought it home, but our human wasn't amused. Not to worry, I told Mojo he's a great hunter.

Freckles is the youngest of my family, a silver bengal who is simply gorgeous. His real name is Solitaire, because there is only one of him, but we call him Freckles because that's what he looks like - a silver freckled cat. He only drinks water from the tap, and he likes to sleep cuddled up to me. We might call him Feckless because his tail got caught under a cupboard when he was a kitten - curiosity is supposed to kill the cat but in Freckles case it only maimed him - so his tail is all twisted in one spot. Freckles has the fur of a desert cat and dislikes the cold, and in summer he's enjoying the sun stretched out on the deck. Today he ventured out for a few minutes with Mojo and me, lured out by our blackbird, but ended up curled up in our human's eiderdown.

My human prefers to be behind the camera, but this picture captures her most prominent feature - her hair. I believe it's been taken in Amorgos, one of her favorite places, where she was sailing one summer and, I believe, had just lost her heart. I'm glad to say she has found it again, but I'm not sure she agrees.

His Majesty Mingus

foto: Jonas Mårtensson

I visited Jonas the other day for a photo shoot, and my human called me "His Majesty Mingus" when she saw this shot. Must say I do look kind of aloof and grown-up here, don't I.

After a few days of melting snow and dripping roofs, winter has returned with a vengeance - it's cold with every surface slippery, but the sky is blue and the sun back. And our blackbird is singing, clinging to his intimations of spring.

How did the poet put it? Oh wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?

My credo exactly.

Of wolf and man - or who's afraid of the big bad wolf

foto: Staffan Widstrand

 Spent the morning in our favorite woods, tracking scents in the snow, then chasing the ghosts of these scents with my nose to the wind. Howl! I'm free, stripped off my veneer of civilization for the moment, forgetting everything except the the wind in my face and the snow under my feet and the sheer happiness of being alive. And running.

Not far from here close relatives live in the wild, the wolves of Riala, with four pups to carry on the legacy. If they live, because the hunt is on, both legally and illegally. Wolves, it seems, are fair game. Wolves, it seems, bring out the worst in man. Wolves, like man, are great hunters, at the top of the food chain. Wolves, like man, live in close-knit family groups, depending on family structures for survival. Wolves, like man, kill. Wolves, unlike man, kill for food and survival. Man, we know, kills because he can.

wolf in setter's clothing

Under the title "Wolf to Woof: The Evolution of Dogs," National Geographic Magazine informs us that "about 12,000 years ago hunter-gatherers in what is now Israel placed a body in a grave with its hand cradling a pup. Whether it was a dog or a wolf can’t be known. Either way, the burial is among the earliest fossil evidence of the dog’s domestication. Scientists know the process was under way by about 14,000 years ago but do not agree on why. Some argue that humans adopted wolf pups and that natural selection favored those less aggressive and better at begging for food. Others say dogs domesticated themselves by adapting to a new niche—human refuse dumps. Scavenging canids that were less likely to flee from people survived in this niche, and succeeding generations became increasingly tame. According to biologist Raymond Coppinger: “All that was selected for was that one trait—the ability to eat in proximity to people.” At the molecular level not much changed at all: The DNA makeup of wolves and dogs is almost identical. In the words of National Geographic.

Identical enough for wolves and dogs to produce fertile offspring, maybe too close for comfort. Having wolves around again, after having hunted them nearly into extinction, reminds us that our dogs are wolves in disguise, and ancient illogical fears rear their ugly heads. Once upon a time ... wolves changed into werewolves at night, abducting and eating babies, hence were the epitome of evil, or the devil incorporate. Now hunters mourn their beloved dogs falling prey to wolves, clamoring for revenge. "A dead wolf is a good wolf," as someone put it, uncomfortably reminiscent of "the only good injun is a dead injun." Exterminate all the brutes! right, reliving the heart of darkness, again. Conveniently forgetting that far more dogs are killed by cars and trigger-happy hunters' bullets than by wolves, but here we go. Were wolves are concerned, logic falls by the wayside.

The Swedish government may cave in to the pressure from hunters' interest (because at the heart of the wolf controversy is, along with irrational fears, the question of who has the right to the game), but wolves are here to stay. If only in the DNA of man's best friend. Howlllllllllllllll!

Crescent sun

This morning the light was special, and the sun looked more like the moon than anything. My human explained it as a partial eclipse of the sun by the moon, and it was just magical - the snow glowed and the sun was moon but what a bright one! We couldn't get a picture of the sun, but look at the way it gilded my fur...

I spent some time at Sign's while my human worked, and back home again we went for a long walk along the frozen waterfront, all the way to the ducks (we fed them bread) and back again. It's the new year's resolution, you know, being taken for walks by the dog.

Human animals

Today I got lucky - on our walk we ran into Signe and her humans, and walked together all the way through our local jungle to the marina, and back. As our humans mainly stuck to the footpath (too much snow for two-legged animals off-path) Signe and I ran along the waterfront making the snow whirl around us. Sheer happiness for a setter and a retriever, and winter is heaven on earth. Back home I snuggled into my very own pillow, off limits to cats, humans, and visitors.

Meanwhile my human was busy scouting out info about cameras on the internet. She has sold off all her fancy Nikons and makes do with one of those aim-and-shoot thingies, but I know she is lusting for the real thing. Again. She used to be a photographer, but traded in images for words (or so the story goes). This change of heart is your fault, Lotta, and in particular that lovely shot of our Agapanthus with snowcap, and the magical lighting in it. Beautiful, isn't it.

So I fear there will be an end to my unsupervised days, with a camera on its way in documenting my every move. But until then, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.