Yesterday afternoon, while waiting for power to return, I finished Eco’s Search for the Perfect Language. Interesting and useful – especially the second half, from Wilkins onward, where a priori languages are discussed. More on the topic later- I mention it to set the stage for the book I dove into last night: Salmon’s Gazehounds & Coursing. I’ve been reading a paragraph here, a page or two there – now it’s time to start at the beginning and stop at the end.

For double suspension gallop dogs – and owners – everywhere, allow me to tell you a story about Boone, my 12 year old German Shorthair. About 10 years ago, Boone and I used to visit a local town park – Wagon Hill Farm. Back then, Wagon Hill was a popular spot to run dogs (it was eventually killed by it’s popularity – the town started enforcing it’s leash law). Boone thought he was pretty hot stuff – although there were a few (very few) dogs that could keep up with him, nobody could outrun him. He figured he was the fastest dog on earth. Until… We pulled into the lot one day and I started to grin. There was a car I’d never seen before – clearly a dog car – blankets covering the back seat and (here’s the kicker) retired racer greyhound bumperstickers all over the back end. We got out of the truck and walked into the field a bit; since the greyhound car was the only other one there, it was not a big assumption to guess that the not-so-little old lady in tennis shoes was the one with the retired racer. I said “hi” and did introductions, she whistled her greyhound over so he could meet Boone, and off they went. I’m likely reading way too much into it, but here’s what I saw. They ran off together – not a hard run, but Boone wasn’t trotting – and as they got out into the field the pace started creeping up. At no point was the greyhound trying to drop Boone (he seemed happy just to be running), but it sure seemed like Boone was trying to make a point. Up and up they went – Boone’s effort increasing until he was going pretty much flat out. The racer, of course, was matching stride for stride like nothing was going on. Boone let it all hang out – 105% effort – the kind of thing that one can sustain only briefly. The greyhound was cool, calm and collected; he stayed right at the shorthair’s shoulder. After 10 seconds or so of heart bursting effort, Boone figured it out – not the fastest dog in the world by a long shot. To everyone’s credit, that was that – no spitefulness from Boone, no ‘neener, neener, neener’ from the greyhound. They circled the fields for another 20 minutes or so, just loving the wind in their faces; Boone got a great workout, and I imagine we at least got the greyhound’s heart pumping a little faster.

Now when I’m out running the dogs and someone comments on how fast they are, I just smile. They are pretty fast when matched against most folk’s experience, but Boone and I are here to tell you – there’s a whole ‘nother speed range out there that just gets going when my dogs are topping out. My best to Steve, Gail Goodman and Dutch Salmon.

The frog folk who visit the site know this already, but for people whose tastes may not run so much in the direction of anuran minutia – a dendrobatid that hasn’t been seen in 77 years has been rediscovered. With all the news about chytrid decimating tropical amphibians, this is the best thing I’ve heard in a while. Story and pictures here (there’s also an article in the April National Geographic, I’m told). The effort is already underway to protect and conserve these little gems. Congratulations and thanks to all involved.

I thought he was a goner,
the snake came back (though not exactly the very next day)…

*

Snakes are perfect office pets. They need to be fed every week or two, need fresh water more frequently, but don’t really care if you are out of the office for a long weekend. They’re also a great ice breaker – especially with kids. So – I had a corn snake (one that the boy and I had bred and hatched out) in a 20 gal. tank in the office. Early last fall I didn’t put the lid back on securely after showing him to a visitor; I came in the next morning to an empty enclosure. I searched thoroughly – nuthin’. I kept expecting him to turn up coiled behind a box on a shelf or out in the middle of the room early in the morning, but as time passed I figured he’d either found his way outside or had expired in a wall or dropped ceiling someplace.

I was watering some plants (aside – I need to post some pictures of the greenery soon – one of the ladyslippers is in bloom) in a neighboring room this morning and what should be coiled on a east-facing windowsill, waiting for the sun, but the long-lost corn snake looking pretty hale and hearty. I’m not sure where he’s going to end up – there’s a Pueblan milk snake doing office duty now – but it’s nice to see him again. I’m not sure whether he’s hungry, needs a little re-taming, or both, but once warmed up, he’s more than willing to strike. Maybe I should put up a no-smoking sign >grin<.

Nice gallery of Lesser Kestrel shots (via MeFi) at Jerome Guillaumot’s web site. He also has some nice bee eater (and Hoopoe – guide to the thirty!) pictures – enjoy.

Or: Robosex on the Leks

Some very cool research on Sage Grouse is being done by Gail Patricelli and Alan Krakauer out of UC Davis. From Dr. Patricelli’s site:

Using a 24-microphhone recording array as an ADM system, Alan and I plan to examine whether males adjust their acoustic radiation patterns to direct the energy of their displays toward females, and whether variation in directionality affects male courtship success. Since females often move during courtship, we will examine the degree to which males adjust their positions and/or acoustic radiation patterns to track females, and whether the ability to do so affects male courtship success. To examine this experimentally, Alan and I collaborated with Tom Fowler of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology to build a robotic female sage-grouse that will allow us to measure each male’s ability to track moving females and respond to female behaviors by adjusting their displays. The robot is equipped with a microphone and video camera, allowing us to quantify the male’s display from the perspective of the receiving female. Using the ADM system to measure the signal that the male radiates in all directions, and the robot to measure the signal received by the target female, we will have a unique ability to quantify how directionality shapes male display behaviors and female choice in sage-grouse.

Be sure to click through and check out the fembot spycam footage (or just click here, you lazy dubba >smile<).

Another dog post – and there may be more coming – yikes! I’ve been looking at pedigrees and got a note from a friend recently reminding me that Westminster is next week – I figure there’s no time like the present to lay out my views on dog ‘assessments’.

First – why evaluate? Often, it’s done as part of a breeding program – does the dog look right? Can it do what it was bred to do? Breeding isn’t always the motivation, though; obedience trials can show how biddable a dog is, but they can also showcase the two-legger’s training skills. A particular activity with a particular breed falls somewhere on a breeding <-> skills continuum. Excellence in the obedience ring is an important data point if I’m looking at Border Collie pedigrees (teamwork/intelligence being a key element of what I think of as good Border Collie-ness) – the same attribute in a Bluetick Hound? Not so much – that one is really a testament to trainer effort. I’ve got a foot in both boats – as a obedience trainer and instructor it’s important for me to demonstrate competence by titling dogs – as a bird hunter, I need to look at breedings with an eye towards field work.

Why would a breeder want to formally test their dogs? Lots of reasons – if we’re talking about AKC registered dogs (the vast majority of ‘purebred’ pups in the US) it’s important to remember that the cosmystical papers (as in, “My dog’s a purebred, I have his papers.”) mean one thing – sire and dam have papers. Even the sire and dam thing was a little iffy in years past, but the AKC is doing more DNA testing to keep their brand safe. Papers do not mean that the dog can herd stock or find birds or tree raccoons – they certify that the parents were AKC registered, period. From the Designer Dogs article referenced below:

For example, the A.K.C. has no choice but to register anything that’s the product of two registered German shepherds as a German shepherd. And yet Mark Neff, a canine geneticist at the University of California at Davis, says, “I can go out and find the most bizarre German shepherds in the world, and I can start crossing and inbreeding them,” selecting for, rather than against, their eccentricities. Gradually, he could produce some deviant dogs. They could be lithe and spotted. They could be dwarfs. “I would be despised,” Neff said, but his dogs would be German shepherds by virtue of their all-German shepherd pedigrees.

If the dog belongs to a different registry (breed clubs, Field Dog Stud Book) there may or may not be more going on than there is with the AKC – I’ll talk a little about German-affiliated US clubs in a bit. A breeder could actually work his or her dogs – AKC or not – and demonstrate to potential buyers that the breeding has the right stuff – a common occurrence when looking at a working breed. There may be issues with relying exclusively on this approach – distance problems (if one is really interested in pudelpointers for example, but finds that most of the breeders are in the upper midwest) and that always perilous affliction – kennel-blindness. I assume that any breeder I speak with is going to think pretty highly of his dogs (if not, I’m outta there); sometimes that regard for one’s own gets a little out of control and too much is done to show the dog in the most favorable light. So… for a bunch of reasons, it seems like it would be nice to have some objective measures of a particular dog – in come the shows, trials, etc.

I classify dog evaluations into 2 groups – unfortunately, the names of the evaluations don’t give you a hint as to which class they fall into. First, we have what I’ll call competitive evaluations: conformation shows (think Westminster) and field trials, for example. The second group are standards-based evaluations like hunt tests and obedience trials. In a competitive evaluation there are a fixed number of ribbons to be awarded – 1st place, 2nd place, 3rd place, the rest of you go home. Standards do come into play, but dogs are primarily judged against each other – in a show, the question is ‘who is the most Pointer-y of all the Pointers here today?’ The judge can withhold ribbons (at least in a conformation show) if none of the dogs are up to snuff, but to say that’s a rare event would be understatement. In a standards-based evaluation the number of ribbons can range from zero to the number of dogs entered. If your dog does what it’s supposed to do well enough, it qualifies. There may also be 1st, 2nd, 3rd places, but a qualifying score – even if it’s not within shouting distance of the first-place performance – gets you closer to a title.

The big problem with competitive evaluations can be summed up in a word: more. If some coat on a dog is good, more must be better. If a little slope to the dog’s topline is good, more must be better. If medium range and some bird finds are good, huge range and more finds must be better. The testing method encourages, even drives, extremism and helps cause the show/field split that has divided some kinds of dogs into two separate breeds. Nobody, seeing an AKC show English Setter and an American Field (FDSB) setter for the first time, should be expected to realize that – up until quite recently – they were the same dog. Don’t get me wrong – there are clubs that are doing their darndest to keep work and conformation together in one dog, but more is a powerful force for fragmentation.

I think standards-based evaluations do a much better job establishing a baseline for what a breed should be. Dogs who fit the standard are recognized, those who don’t, aren’t. Here’s where I think the German breed clubs and their foreign affiliates do a nice job. They evaluate, against standards, for both conformation and performance. If a dog looks like a, b and c and has demonstrated it is capable of doing x, y and z then it gets a check mark for being a breedable example of Schleswig-Holstein Goose Dog (don’t bother Googling – I made it up – I hope). A key word here is baseline – one needs to establish an envelope – inside you’ve got German Shorthairs, with some healthy variation – outside, other dogs.

Horses for courses – within the broad boundaries of a breed, it’s up to breeders and to some extent, the breed club to decide what they’re all about. A falconer hawking big prairie grouse and a gun hunter crawling around a New England woodcock cover may have different needs regarding range and thus may choose different breeds or breeders. One thing’s for sure though – if they buy a pointing dog, they need a dog that will point feather without being taught – baseline for not just the breed, but the type.

As I mentioned below (in comments, especially), I’m hoping to be able to share a couple field dog examples over the next couple years – don’t touch that dial.

There’s an interesting article up on the web from the NYT Sunday Magazine: The Modern Kennel Conundrum. It’s an examination of the relatively recent phenomenon of designer dogs – puggles, labradoodles, Sharp Assets (Shar Pei x Basset – holy cr@p!). I’m not going to summarize – as the saying goes, RTWT (hopefully my link works – the Times’ registration system sometimes messes me up) – but I am going to post my reaction.

Part of me says, “Who cares?” I’m interested in dogs that can do a job – bird dogs, sight hounds, and scent hounds/earth dogs. As long as I can find folks that are producing critters that work, I’m OK. Otherwise, it’s a (kinda) free country – knock yourself out. If you don’t like puppy mills – educate people. If you don’t like designer dogs – or the AKC show craziness – keep your money in your pocket.

Another part of me – the part that caused me to start writing this screed – starts in with the head-shaking. It seems to me that what many people really want is a little robot-dog-doll – something that you can turn off when your ‘busy modern lifestyle (TM)’ demands and turn back on when you need the emotional support that dogs are so good at providing. I’m mostly serious here; hypothesis: one of the best things that could happen to dogs is the development of robotics to a point where something like this could provide dog-equivalent emotional support.

Dogs are living things – they are first, last and always, dogs – not children in fur suits. They have been incredibly successful because of their social skills – looking at it from a Selfish Gene perspective, this whole designer thing may be yet another adaptation – but it pains me to see people (mostly Americans) expose themselves as needy, unreflective and basically empty in front of the rest of the planet and any aliens watching our teevee signals.

Wow, that was dyspeptic! Here’s a palate cleanser:

I’ll be interested to see if Patrick (the Terrierman) comments on the article – always good working dog perspective over there.

Proof that I am an intellectual magpie hopelessly derivative an amazing synthesist – a blog post that brings together two of my (many) favorite Fretmarks posts – Facts and Figures and It must be the weather. Via the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy we have FM3-05-213 (warning – large PDF), aka Special Forces Use of Pack Animals. Regarding elephants we are advised:

ELEPHANTS
10-41. Elephants are considered an endangered species and as such should not be used by U.S. military personnel. There are about 600,000 African elephants and between 30,000 and 50,000 Asian elephants. Approximately 20 percent are in captivity, so it is difficult to estimate their numbers exactly. The Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species regards both species as threatened. Elephants are not the easygoing, kind, loving creatures that people believe them to be. They are, of course, not evil either. They simply follow their biological pattern, shaped by evolution. The secret of becoming a good trainer is to learn this pattern. The handler can then apply it to himself and the elephants under his control.

There you have it – “not evil either” – applies pretty well to most animals! The rest of the manual looks quite interesting – most of what I know about pack horses and mules I learned by reading Norman Maclean and can be summarized as one, loading is an art and two, done poorly it is a very bad thing.

A siege of Megara during the Wars of the Diadochi was reportedly broken when the Megarians poured oil on a herd of pigs, set them alight, and drove them towards the enemy’s massed war elephants. The elephants bolted in terror from the flaming squealing pigs often killing great numbers of the army the elephant was part of (Aelian, de Natura Animalium book XVI, ch. 36). *

I’m pretty confident that quite a few readers of this blog will recognize the type of handgun pictured above and know why it’s included in an ‘elephants’ post. If I ever fall into a pile of money (very unlikely I’ll get that kind of coin by the sweat of my brow) one of my eccentricities will be a collection of howdah pistols. They are an echo from a different time – tangible, beautiful evidence of a world that is no more.

For those that aren’t up on obscure firearms, a howdah pistol was sometimes carried as a last line of defense when tiger hunting from atop an elephant. If an extremely upset tiger tried to get into the howdah with you, you’d use the pistol. Heavy caliber, not too accurate, brutal recoil, but better than a mauling…

Though I remain envious of the Dackel Princess (except, of course, when it’s clean-up time), I’m managing to take the edge off the desire for a puppy by pup-sitting a couple afternoons a week. Tough duty for all involved: