It has taken me about 12 years to gather the information and photographs for my upcoming book Pointing Dogs, Volume One: The Continentals. In one of the final chapters I sum it all up with the following lines:

I have watched double-nosed Spanish Pointers hunt quail in the arid hills of Guadalajara, and I’ve seen Old Danish Pointers seek partridge under the wind turbines of Jutland. I’ve chased ruffed grouse with Pont-Audemer Spaniels in Manitoba and hunted sharptailed grouse with a small herd of Large Munsterlanders in Saskatchewan. I saw a Weimaraner kill a roe deer with a single bite on the island of Baltrum, and I’ve seen German Shorthaired Pointers and Brittanies just about everywhere I’ve been. And everything I’ve seen has led me to one conclusion: a pointing dog’s raison d’être is to put a smile on its owner's face.

Now that the book is headed to the printing press, I can sum up the writing/editing/designing part by saying that American journalist Gene Fowler was correct when he wrote: Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.

The image above is a co-creation from the über-talented artist Fontana Swing. It shows me doing what I've been doing for approximately 16 hours a day for the last 18 months: Writing, pausing, writing some more and trying my best to make sure that I haven't any words out.