Maybe I Should Stick With Still Photography

Felix and Souris sharing a point on sharptailed grouse, Fall 2003

Yesterday we finally got out to do some training after a winter from hell (we were more or less cooped up since early December, in fact it SNOWED only three days ago!) Anywho, one of our goals this year is to teach a young Pont Audemer Spaniel to honour a point. My Ponto Uma does it just fine, but her cousin Vinnie still needs to figure it out. So we headed to our training grounds with pigeons and launchers and figured we would give it a try.

On the way out the door, I decided to grab my video camera instead of my usual still camera just for fun. It ended up being a very educational session. Here is what I learned;

1. I suck at making videos
2. It is really hard to train a dog and video-tape at the same time..especially with the remote for the bird launcher in one hand and two or three dogs running around the field.
3. My dogs have completely forgotten what "steady to flush" means
4. Despite all the hassle, it was actually a lot of fun! I think I will ask a friend of mine who is a journalist with a pro video camera to come out one day to get some better footage.

So, if you are interested in watching my very amateur attempt at video, check out

Part 1 and Part 2

And please be gentle with your critiques....

Craig

Perdiguero de Burgos

The memories I have of the various breeds I’ve seen are inevitably linked with my memories of the countries where I observed and photographed them. For some reason, with the Perdiguero de Burgos the link is particularly strong. I simply cannot think of them without recalling the hot, arid areas of Spain where we’ve seen them and had the opportunity to watch them work.

Our first encounter with the breed was in northern Spain where we spent an afternoon with a lovely young female Burgos as she worked oat-stubble fields for quail. On that hot, windless day I came to understand why hunters in the area would prefer dogs that pace themselves instinctively for a long, hot day of hunting. Several years later, this time on a visit to central Spain, we once again watched Perdiguero de Burgos work in warm, dry conditions. And once again, I saw the reasoning behind the dog’s working style.

Burgos are large dogs, up to 67 cm’s for the males. Their build is a classic fusion of hound and pointer; loose hanging skin, long low set ears, powerful muzzle and a well proportioned, muscular body built for endurance. To my eye, there were significant differences between the sexes; males being quite a bit larger and more heavy-set than the females. Even among individuals of the same sex, there was significant variation, especially in the heads.

As with their appearance, there were noticeable differences in the way the individuals ran. All displayed fairly good speed and agility, covering the dry rocky ground with ease. Some were noticeably faster than others however. Some dogs worked closer, others further out. Regardless of the individual working style, none left any question as to their desire and ability. They hunted, pointed and retrieved quite well. They also seemed fairly easy to handle. Speaking with club members near Madrid, they all agreed that one of the best things about these dogs is how easy they are to train and handle. Miguel Trevijano of the Asociación Española del Perro Perdiguero de Burgos told me that “Our dogs are very useful for hunting almost everything. And they are also easy to train and easy to get along with. Many of our members used to have other breeds, Pointers, Setters, Bretons, but now they have Burgos because they are so easy to get along with, very easy to hunt with and good in the home. Our membership has doubled in the last five years. Hunters are finding out just how good these dogs hunt and how easy they are to live with”.

From what I observed I would agree with Senor Trevijano. The Perdiguero de Burgos that he and the other members of the Asociación so kindly allowed us to observe and photograph were very nice hunting dogs indeed.

Click here or on the photo above to view a gallery of photographs of the Perdigueros de Burgos we saw on our recent visit to Spain (all dogs featured courtesy of the Asociación Española del Perro Perdiguero de Burgos)

8K and a make-over.

Two weeks ago, when I finally downloaded the last of the images from our recent whirl-wind Euro-trip, I was stunned to see that I had over 8 thousand shots to edit. Well, here it is two weeks later and I’ve managed to whittle the 8K down to a more reasonable number hovering around 900 frames. I’ve almost done sorting them into breed-specific galleries and have begun posting a few to my website. Speaking of my website, I’ve given it a bit of a make-over. I combined my fine art site with my dog-photo site into a (hopefully) easy-to-view one-stop shop featuring a bunch of old and new photos combined into a bunch of new galleries.

Have a look and let me know what you think!

www.craigkoshykphoto.ca

On the Road Again...and Again and Again

I strapped myself into an aisle seat of a plane headed for Chicago this morning. A couple of bumpy hours later my wife and I landed at O’Hare airport and spent much of the day wandering from one Starbucks to another until we boarded a flight to Munich. As I write, I am strapped into yet another aisle seat on yet another plane. This one is bigger. And so are the bumps. So in an effort to forget my fears during this white-knuckle flight, I figured I’d whip out the laptop and update my blog.

Munich is not our final destination today. We’re actually heading to Madrid, via Munich. We’re on our way to photograph several gundog breeds native to Spain. On Saturday we will visit with Carlos Contera, a renowned breeder of Spanish Double Nosed Pointers for a photo shoot of his dogs in action. On Sunday, we are scheduled to meet with breeders of Perdiguero de Burgos, another Spanish pointing breed, similar to the Bracco Italiano. On Monday we head to Majorca to photograph a gundog breed that is only found on that island. It is called the Ca Mé Mallorqui. I think the first thing I'm going to do when I get there is to ask the club members how to pronounce Ca Mé Mallorqui!

After Mallorca, we head to Portugal, after that, Italy, France, Holland and Germany. So stay tuned for updates, photos and more tales from the aisle seat.

Now, where’s that barf-bag?

Straight Talk from a Terrierman

I've been working on my book project this weekend and making slow but steady progress on the chapter regarding the concept of purebred dogs and the "sport" of dog shows. Surfing the net for information on the subject, I came across an excellent blog post regarding the AKC and its British counterpart, the Kennel Club.

In it, blogger Patrick Burns lays out a scathing indictment of modern dog breeding practices that are still based on failed genetic theories of the 19th century. He pulls no punches, even going so far as to point out the rather high inbreeding co-efficient in the offspring of Charles Darwin himself. Yet he is careful not to simply accuse dog show enthusiasts of stupidity or deliberate wrong-doing, saying:

" Let me hasten to say that the Kennel Club is not filled with evil people intent on doing harm to dogs. It is, in fact, filled with regular people who are different from the rest of the world only in the degree (and the way) they seek ego-gratification and are status-seeking."

And I agree. Most of the show people I've met are indeed very nice folk. I am sure that they really do care for their dogs and work hard at their "sport". They seem to have good intentions and truly believe that they are "improving" the breed, one dog show at a time. However, when it comes to breeds of dogs whose entire genetic code is supposed to be hardwired for the hunt, putting them in the hands of show breeders is like selecting marines based on their performance in ballet school.

Ballet school is not about training young men to storm a beach and dogs shows are not about dogs. Burns sums it up nicely: "This last point is import: the Kennel Club is not primarily about dogs. Dogs do not care about ribbons, pedigrees, titles, and points. These are human obsessions. The reason a human will drive several hundred miles and stand around all day waiting for 10 minutes in the ring is not because of the dog, but because the human needs that ribbon, that title, and that little bit of extra status that comes from a win."

On the Boob Tube

Recently my dogs and I were featured on a CBC television program called ZigZag. Journalist Denis Chamberlain followed us in the forest as we hunted ruffed grouse on a fine autumn day.

Souris-Manon, my weim bitch and Quell Zum Laubwald, a longhaired weimaraner owned by my friend Sal were the stars of the show. It is always very difficult to get good video footage of bird dogs doing their thing, especially in actual hunting situations with wild birds, but Denis did a great job! There are some really nice scenes in the piece that will hopefully give you an idea of the kind of terrain we hunt in. You will notice that at one point in the video, a woodcock is flushed. There are not many of them in Manitoba, but we do come across one or two each season. They are not a listed as a game bird so we only "shoot" them with a camera.

In the scene, Souris is on point and it looks like Quell is backing her (both dogs are natural backers and a real pleasure to hunt together). Souris is actually pointing a ruffed grouse but Quell was not really backing her, he was pointing another bird..a woodcock! When the grouse flushed, my friend Ross fired and missed. Then, to our surprise, a woodcock flushed. I called out "Bécasse!" (that's French for woodcock) and Denis managed to "shoot" it with the video camera as it flew out of the woods.

You can view the video by clicking HERE (it may take a while to load, just let the download do its thing then view it when it is completely loaded).
Oh, one more thing...it's all in French. But don't worry, the action is pretty easy to understand for non-French speakers.
Enjoy!