The Glorious Twelfth

August 12, 2024Dog Willing

Today is perhaps the holiest of holy days among sportsmen and women in the UK. It is the Glorious Twelfth of August, the day the shooting season opens.

The Pointing Pig

April 15, 2021Dog Willing

Pannage is the practice of letting pigs freely roam around a forest so that they can feed on fallen acorns and other nuts. In medieval times it was beneficial to the forest since all those pigs rooting around would help turn the soil and since they were basically gorging on nuts, the pigs would quickly fatten for slaughter. An additional benefit was that by eating green acorns , which can be toxic to other farm animals, they reduced the risk of poisoning in horses and cows. In 1809 two brothers who bred and trained pointers and setters realized that they could train a pig to help them in yet another way. The could use it to find and point game!

Whit's fur ye'll no go past ye

February 20, 2021Dog Willing

So I fell into yet another rabbit hole today.

With a belly full of coffee and dogs snoozing at my feet, I thought I would put the finishing touches on a chapter I am writing about the golden age of bird dogs in the UK. But I needed just one more nugget of information, an interesting tidbit of trivia to give the reader a wee bit more insight into the period.

One foot in front of the other.

December 31, 2020Dog Willing

So how was your 2020? I suspect the answer is pretty much the same, the world over.

It sucked.

Hard.

But just in case you are wondering about my year and how the various projects I’m involved with are going, well, thank you. Read on….

Got Snipe?

July 24, 2020Dog Willing

I’ve lost count of the number of autumn days I’ve spent hunting ducks in the Libau-Netley Marsh. But I am pretty sure that on most of them, I was startled at least once by a snipe flushing in front of me on the way to the duck blind. And until about 15 years ago, I never shot a single snipe, even though they’ve always been a perfectly legal game bird in Manitoba. The tradition in my family was to save our cartridges for the biggest birds we could find, not ‘waste’ them on such tiny birds as snipe.

What's in a name?

March 08, 2020Dog Willing

I love the French pointing breeds, braques, épagneuls and griffons. But there is one tiresome necessity that comes along with them breed: the need to explain their breed name to English speakers.