"Are You Still Alive!!??"

Watch this movie, and you'll know why I consider NASCAR to be completely lame. Rally:Real cars, on real roads, going real fast!

Foodies Rejoice!

I recently read a piece in our RV Club magazine about an internet discussion site called chowhound.com . It's a sort of craigslist for food-loving people who want to avoid the Olive Gardens and Appleby's out there.

I was searching for information on our favorite Asheville restaurant, Salsa's, (no web site, but here is the chowhound.com information on it.) It turns out my friend Steve, from Charlotte, didn't steer us wrong 3 years ago when he recommended it. It's the number one recommended Asheville restaurant on chowhound.

But, I digress. For people like us, (and other dog people that travel extensively), it's a great resource. Check it out.

They Really Aren't Just "Fur People".

From New Scientist:

"Last week, researchers gathered at a conference held at the Royal Society in London to hear the latest evidence on how animals interpret the world. One thing is clear: they do not see it the same way we do, and only by accepting that can we learn to care for them better. "The matter of central interest is the animals' own perspective on its quality of life," says James Kirkwood of the Universities Federation for animal Welfare, which co-sponsored the conference with the British Veterinary Association." (Emphasis mine.)

This tidbit is from a very interesting article on current research into the state of animal welfare. It's interesting to find out that what your vet doesn't know can make life miserable for your pet.

Read it all here. And a Hat Tip to Richard H. in Canada.

On the Road Again..

Back to our travels, as we're rushing headlong back to the present! After leaving Niagara, we spent Labor Day Weekend in Ontario, Canada, covering the Great Canadian Triathlon. Other than a disappointing outing at the oval racing, we had an enjoyable time. And so did this little one...



















After returning to Michigan we decided to stop for the night in Lapeer...

DINING TIP: The Blind Fish (no web site), in Lapeer has exceptional seafood and, so I'm told, steaks. Excellent Bloody Mary, (but not as good as mine.) Try the Southwest Grouper- a blend of flavors from chilis to cajun. Yum.

...so we could have dinner at one of our favorite restaurants.

Following a couple days in Jackson, we were motivated to get to one of our favorite stops of the year, the Wind Chasers Lure Coursing Club's annual Pig Roast. Oh yeah, there were trials, too.

Then it was time for our annual week vacation from sighthounds: The Dog's Camp. Held at the 4H Education Center in Swannanoa (near Asheville), it's worth an entire post in itself. So go get your clickers and treats, and get ready...

The Dog's Camp is fun!

Let's Get Serious for a Minute..

Before I finish up the travelogue, there's something I noticed this year that I wanted to bring up.

We've witnessed a couple of career ending greyhound wrecks this year. One in April in Ohio, and one a couple weeks ago in Racine. In both cases, these were really intense, fast, talented dogs who came by various routes from greyhound kennels or tracks. I really admire people who make a place in their homes for these athletes who may be retired, "downsized" out of a job, or not quite talented enough for the rigors of the track, but excel in the activities of the "outside" world.

But somehow, I question that motivation when these dogs are suddenly unable to play at the amateur level at lure coursing, or racing, or agility, or whatever the chosen recreational pursuit. In both cases, the dogs referred to above were uprooted once again from their routine and re-re-homed. That bothers me. I just don't get it. Help me out.

Had Buffy not been able to hunt following her cruciate injury at a very early age, believe me, she'd still be living with me. Maybe that's just me. Is it worth discussing??

Below the Falls..

Mouth of the Niagara River and Lake Ontario.

And a couple views from Old Fort Niagara.








 

And Now for Something Completely Different.

This is really, uh, really... well..., you judge for yourselves.

TOTH to Cindy... you heretic, you! :)

The Challenge...

Last two Falls pic, I promise. When we go somewhere that's visited by millions of people from all over the world, and photographed by the majority of them, the challenge is to come up with something different.

Did I do it? I don't know, but these are two that I liked.

"Wet" Shots

As promised, from the camera-in-a-baggie.

The "Hurricane Deck". It's amazing how wet you can get.

Whirlwind Time Travel

At the very least, I can post a few appropriate photos from our travels over the last two months. That seems the most I can do, as every time we get on a high speed network, it's at the end of a long day, (or in this case, a long week), and I can barely keep my eyes open, let alone think coherently. So...

Where were we? Oh yes- after the naked art fair, we did a more conventional fair in Monroe Michigan, in conjunction with the River Raisin..

Jazz Festival. Monroe is a very old city at the mouth of the Detroit River, (where it empties into Lake Erie), and is home to one of the largest fleets of charter fishing boats on the Great Lakes. It was also the boyhood home of this famous (or in-famous, depending on your ethnic bent) coursing hound owner:

The jazz was of the "smooth" variety, for which I have little tolerance, but the festival was across the river, so we didn't have to hear much of it. Several very good smaller acts played the gazebo in the town square where the art fair was held, and that kept us entertained through a very productive fair. Note to selves: People with pockets have more money to purchase art!

August was taken up with some racing, and some lure coursing. The weekend before Labor Day, we went to the LCLC trial in the Niagara Falls area. I'll forego the action pictures, with something a whole lot more touristy, as neither of us had spent much time in the past on the American side of the Falls. Our campground, the Four Mile Creek State Campground, was perched on a bluff overlooking Lake Ontario, which gave us some spectacular sunsets..

We hung around for 4 more days after the trial, so we could see the Falls. We did the ultimate Niagara Falls activity (no, we didn't get married!). We took the elevator 175 feet through solid rock to the base of Bridal Veil Falls... we got totally, soaking wet on the "Hurricane Deck", but I got pictures!! Which you'll see in another post, as it appears I've exceeded my alloted file size here.. They're pretty cool, so you won't want to miss 'em!

In Dog Years... I'm 8.58!!

Lookin' good, too.

Note world's largest gyros in background. 

Promises.. promises..

That's all I ever give you readers, isn't it? Maybe tomorrow. Or Thursday... I've got a milestone coming up Thursday.

In the meantime, here's the latest RV rear window graphic from Shot On Site. This, on Greg Cook's vintage '73 FMC gas pusher. Nice rig. Nicer picture. If you've got windows in the back of your vehicle, (and who doesn't?), give us a shout.

Time... and a Signal.

That's what you need to keep regularly posting to a blog. It's what we've been lacking the last couple of weeks. So, just to let regular readers know, we'll be catching up soon. The Lake Country Lure Coursers trials, and several days as touristas in the Niagara Falls area (we did not get married.), the Great Canadian Triathlon and associated events in Ontario, and it just hit me, I never did the piece I wanted to do on the other art fair we did... one with clothes on... in Monroe, MI. (It's even greyhound- deerhound- staghound related. Sort of.)

Meanwhile, here's an interesting image from Lapeer, MI. We're sure we don't know this person; but he sure reminds us of someone! LOL (and will undoubtedly provoke a comment.)

 

Rally Pic of the Week

Really liked this shot of Rally from this past weekend. She's having a pretty good ASFA lure coursing season. As of right now, she's the No.2 Greyhound. Lots can happen between now and the end of the year, but a Top 10 finish seems likely, barring injury. You go girl.

This Week's Nature Shot

Another new irregular feature. Anyone who's followed my career knows I shoot a lot more than dogs when we go to an event. (NOTE: For longtime followers, I must regretfully report the cessation of the longterm "Women of Coursing" project, which has been defunct for just about three years now. You can do the math.)

My favorite subject is birds.

At the Racine Kennel Club field there's a pond in the outer reaches which is home to lots of wildlife. During the trial this past weekend, a couple of the exhibitors tried to get my attention as a good sized Great Blue Heron landed on the bank. It was too far away to shoot. But between courses I wandered out to the pond to see what was there. Much to my surprize, there were several waders feeding. The one you see here, is a Lesser Yellowlegs. More wildlife as it happens. 

In People Years.. He's 70!

I originally tried to publish this on Saturday, the 19th, which was my best buddy's actual birthday. But the vagaries of Blogger just stymied me to no end.
So.. here it is, two days late.

I'm astounded that every week we're at an event, people see Randir (Leelanau Mithrandir) for the first time and say, "I didn't know you had a Deerhound!". Well yeah; I've had him for over 7 years now. A teensy bit more if you throw in the fact that he was born in my basement and lived there for the first 10 weeks of his life. Then he went to his original home for almost 3 years, until I wheedled and cajoled his owners into "loaning" him back to me. (Thanks Dave and Laurie!). That was, as I say, more than 7 years ago. It's what would be called a "long term loan".

He was my favorite puppy. He was the brave explorer.. the only one of the litter of ten who would venture out of the puppy yard with me into the big wide world of the whole back acre and a half.

We've been exploring together ever since, from temporary homes in Kentucky and Wisconsin, to the coast to coast ramblings of the "Express". His favorite stop of all, (in fact the favorite stop of us all.. Dan, Margaret, and Randir's "girls", Buffy, Fanny, and Rally) has got to be New Mexico. This picture was taken last February. That's Randir at 9 1/2. You go boy!!

Hot Dogs!

I was feeling the itch to get out hunting today, so I emailed friend, author, and hound authority extraordinaire, Dutch Salmon in New Mexico to see if the recent, and way overdue, monsoon in the southwest had done much for the jackrabbit population and habitat. The news is good and bad for Dutch, who's also an avid angler: Too much water to fish, but a lot of the rain is hitting the Lazy E, a place we love to hunt. He also sent me this puppy story, (which appears under his byline in several southwestern newspapers). Some of you are going to be real interested in this:

Country Sports


Beware the Man with Eighteen Puppies

By

Dutch Salmon


On July 4th my dog Comet, a rough-coated Greyhound, had nine puppies. She was bred to Kyran, a full-blooded Tazi imported from Uzbekistan (more on this later). It was a planned breeding.
On July 24th my dog Mona, a ½ Tazi X ½ Greyhound, also had nine puppies. She was bred to Samson, a ¾ Greyhound X ¼ Saluki, but in this case Samson slipped through the fence and the puppies were a shocker. It was my fault, the first unplanned breeding in many years, yet it may turn out the best one in the end. But the sum is, I suddenly have 18 puppies in my life!
Not to panic (though initially I did!), half the pups are already promised to good homes and with the canine benevolence of other like-minded dog lovers who want a “one of a kind” dog, the rest – excepting the one or two I’ll keep -- will also be homeward bound in the next couple of months. But the experience has been an education in the derivation of our most ancient hunting breeds.
Various authorities surmise that the man/wild dog relationship began to form way back in the Paleolithic period when we were still hunter/gatherers living in caves. A mutual benefit of hunting and defense was a natural derivation of their talents and ours; little by little certain wolves or wild dogs were at least partially domesticated, hunting hip by jowl with our own wild ancestors. But the selective breeding process that produced types or strains of domestic dogs that we would recognize today as breeds didn’t begin until well into the Neolithic period when agriculture, stock raising, and “civilization” was upon us.
The first recognized type – generally credited – was what we today call the Saluki, an AKC recognized breed. The Saluki formulation was centuries prior to the advent of firearms (and thus “gundogs”) and indeed all the early hunting strains were swift hounds, generally called sighthounds or gazehounds, which could take game like hare, rabbit, fox, deer, antelope etc. without the aid of the human hand or weapon. Numerous ancient artwork from the Middle East clearly indicates that such hunting hounds were at work in the field at least several thousand years before Christ.
But the Saluki had a wide geography, and while all were used for the same general purpose – running down game – they would vary as to topography, tribe, or the game pursued. And in places they became known by another name.
According to Gail Goodman, author of the monumental “Saluqi – Coursing Hound of the East,” as the Saluki evolved from the Arabic countries – Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Syria -- to the more eastern Asiatic domains like Turkey, Turkistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, it took the name “Tazi.” Again, different terrains, tribes, and exigencies of the hunt produced somewhat different types, but all were similar enough that the Tazi/Saluki became a recognized breed.
Over many centuries, these seminal sighthounds were selectively bred to become the Afghan of Afghanistan, Borzoi of Russia, and the Greyhound, Whippet and Scotch Deerhound of the United Kingdom. Other selective breeding creativity by hunters produced today’s bird dogs and trail hounds. But the middle-eastern sighthounds were the first recognizable breeds.
Did the Tazi or the Saluki come first? I’ll let those more expert than I sort that out (I’ve witnessed some heated arguments) and even then the best of them would be guessing – we’re talking about thousands of years of history. But there is no guessing about where most of the hunting Tazi/Salukis are now.
Hunting in the Arabic Middle East has fallen on hard times. The desert terrain meant the game was always sparse. Modern hunting methods, not Salukis but guns and mechanized pursuit, have taken an even greater toll on the wildlife, leaving the ancient pursuit with little to hunt and the hounds that much more rare and esoteric. There are still some good “desert breds” but overall the quality of the hounds has suffered.
In Turkey, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, the old ways have survived, both in coursing and falconry. Magdalena author Steve Bodio, like me an enthusiast of the archaic, made several trips to the brutal steppe country of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, where it boils in summer and grabs you with iron cold in winter. At considerable expense and effort, the result was the falconry book, “Eagle Dreams,” and the acquisition of three full-blooded Tazi hounds, duly imported to New Mexico. He said all the Tazi of the steppes were hard-boiled hunters, mostly for hare and a large subspecies of the red fox, and fine and valued companions. All eighteen of my puppies are the beneficiaries, to a greater or lesser degree, of this “blood.”
The breeding is apparent in the performance. Last winter Mona, barely a year old, and two other hounds did what the Tazi has done for thousands of years, pursue a hare (jackrabbit). The pursuit was sprint, jink, dodge and turn for 4 ½ minutes – an extreme course -- whence the hare, sensing the end, left them all gasping by ducking down a badger hole.
Showing her youth, Mona, one half of a Tazi import, was slightly slower in the early going, just as strong at the end, but the difference came after we had watered and cooled the pack. The other two hounds, a Greyhound and a Greyhound/Saluki cross, were content to follow in my footsteps as we hiked back to the truck. They’d had it. Within five minutes Mona was back at a strong lope, working out ahead like a bird dog, pure exuberance, using her nose as well as eyes and hoping to jump another jack. I was just as glad we didn’t.
You can’t teach that, or force it. You can inherit it from a line of hounds that have done nothing but work at their trade, and bond with their hunting masters, for thousands of years.
Most of our dogs, like most of us, have gone soft. I “work out,” but I could no more keep up with Jim Bridger or Ben Lilly than this year’s “best” Saluki at Westminster could keep up with Mona.
Now I have eighteen puppies. I have added some Greyhound blood, for that extra dash of speed, to the heritage of the Tazi/Saluki. I know from experience that most of the hares will still be too much for us. But win or lose, as the puppies mature, that link to the ancient and archaic will provide all the satisfaction I could ever want in the field.


Interested in one of these pups? You ought'a get in touch with Dutch muy pronto. Email me to find out how if you don't already know.

If you want to see Steve Bodio's Tazi pups, (it's a population explosion out there in New Mexico!!), go here . I'll have a picture of Dutch and Mona up here soon.

Death of a Legend: "Where Men are Men, and Women Win the Iditarod"

Found this today in the Detroit Free Press online edition. If you can find a copy of Mitch Albom's 1996 Live Albom III:Gone to the Dogs collection , (try here), you'll find out why his peers voted him the best sports columnist in the nation for more than 10 years running. He's simply the best. And so was the subject of this column.

That Damned Black Bitch.

It's time to post a few more pictures... We went racing last weekend, down in Lewisville, Indiana. The track is one of the nicer ones we see in our travels. It's bordered by a small stream on one side, and a row of old, stately shade trees on the other. The trees provide a natural border, so that unsightly tape that shows up in pictures from other tracks doesn't need to be used here.

Rally has done well in her first 4 LGRA racemeets, winning 3 of them. That was going to change this weekend. Our friends, Jerry and Vada, had entered their greyhound, Gilda . It was her first event after a long recovery from a dislocated toe, (subsequently amputated), suffered at the ASFA Greyhound Specialty in March. We knew Gilda was going to be fast, but this was ridiculous! (and typical. That's Gilda #2, Rally #3, and Science #4... Rally had trouble with Science off and on this weekend as well, finishing 3rd on Saturday, but coming back for second on Sunday). Gilda went undefeated over the weekend.

It was a small meet, with Rhodesian Ridgebacks, (who almost ran me down!), Italian Greyhounds, and a veritable plethora of Basenjis. We were done early both days, just in time for lunch, provided by the people of Lewisburg for a nominal charge, in exchange for using the park for free. Great deal.

This weeks nature special:
 

Therapy

Democrats will love this. A lot of Republicans, too, I'll bet. Thanks to Frank V. for the heads-up.