Source.

I’ve always particularly liked this song.

This was from a film in which he traveled to Estonia and Russia (USSR) during glasnost and perestroika. I believe the name of the documentary was “Mr. Bragg Goes to Moscow.”

For some reason, he’s wearing a t-shirt with Lenin on it, which give him street credit in Moscow. I don’t think it has the same effect for us Americans.

Source

My, what big teeth you have!

Seriously.

The photo above comes from W.E. Mason’s Dogs of All Nations.

The description goes as follows:

Color: Black, grizzle, reddish brown, either self colored or with tan, white ar white with large dark patches or brindle, with or without tan markings. White on the chest and legs is permissible, but not desirable. Height: 22 in. Weight: 55 lbs.

This is a medium sized dog [emphasis mine], rather long in the body but well built, and is very game and intelligent. The head is lean, skull broad between the ears and long leaves muzzle. The ears are of medium size, carried erect, and pointed forward. The eye are almond shaped, dark in color, full of “fire” and intelligence, but often sour. The body is rather narrow, with deep chest, straight back and strong loins. The tail well coated, carried low when the dog is quiet and gaily but not over the back whe excited. There are three varieties as to coat: A. Smooth coated. Short dense are hard, round the neck the coat is longer and harder. B. Long haired, wavy and hard the hair on the head partially covering the eyes, and with well marked beard are moustaches and tail well feathered. C. Wire haired. Straight, hard and wiry, the on the head and legs being especially short and hard with beard and eyebrows we developed.

 The description of the GSD of this time period reminds me more of the Dutch shepherd. The wire-haired and long-haired varieties described could be easily found in certain modern wire-haired Dutch shepherds.

We also know that German shepherd come in a faulty long-coat, which is more like a Tervuren’s, that also exists in Dutch shepherds.

Look closely at the photo above.

Notice how the back is not sloping.

The dog is not exaggerated in the least. It is a very moderate animal.

It is quite a bit smaller than the GSD’s one finds today, and it’s certainly smaller than the so-called “old-fashioned” German shepherds that weigh in excess of a 120 pounds.

The real old-fashioned GSD was smaller, not larger.

And if you want to see something similar to it, look at the Dutch and Belgian shepherds.

Willie is the only Jack Russell I have known with such a pronounced retrieving instinct.

He will fetch a ball or a stuffed toy until you are tired of it.

I remember getting into a little bit of trouble when Willie was about six months old. He was wanting to play fetch really bad, and I ran him pretty hard through the mud.

 Mostly white JRT’s don’t look so nice when they covered in mud.

You can tell from this beach photo that Willie will chase even a sand-covered tennis ball until the cows come home.

Now, if only I could find another golden retriever like that…

Not an Alapaha.

A robot!

Dad bagged this nice 8-point white-tail buck at a little after 5 PM on Thanksgiving Day.

The deer was shot from the hayshed, which provides a clear view of a pasture that includes a very steep hill that then drops off into the woods. Between the woods and the pasture is a stand of evergreens that are being raised for Christmas trees that provide a good windbreak in the worst of the winter.

The deer tend to cross the pasture just outside that edge habitat, providing a pretty clear shooting range.

He had seen a doe with two fawns enter the pasture. These are local deer that always seem to always be there just as it is getting dark.

Then another large doe came trotting across the pasture just outside that edge. She was trotting quickly, which usually means a buck is right behind them.

And this one was.

This doe was in estrous relatively late in the season, and this buck, who had probably spread his genes into most of the other does around here, wasn’t wasting another opportunity to do so.

Now, for those of you from more trophy-hunting centered states probably won’t think much of this specimen, but for West Virginia, it’s a pretty large deer.

Deer are managed here more to provent nuisances and overpopulation than to produce giants.

It is supposed to snow tonight, so that may have made the deer more active than normal. Normally, these larger deer know fully well that they are particularly sought after during hunting season, and they avoid people at all costs.

Or they go to the local park, which is only about a half mile away.

Or they go to town.

Any place where they can’t be hunted.

The big deer seem to know this.

They didn’t get big by being stupid.

But every once in a while, one slips up.

And that’s what happened to this one.

Thanksgiving ham was the main course. The pigs were butchered as soon as the coolness of November settled in.

Of course, the winters now are so mild that November isn’t the best month to butcher hogs.

Of course, that also assumes that people still keep pigs to fatten for their own use.

It’s now much cheaper to buy it.

Keep in mind that for centuries, the main source for red meat for most people was the hog. Hogs could be fattened on acorns  or beechmast and table scraps. 

In Medieval England, commoners were given the right to use the forest for their pigs in the Carta de Foresta. The practice of turning pigs out into the forest for forage is known as pannage.  The rights laid down in that legal document provided a modicum of economic rights into the English common law. So the reliance of English peasants on the pig as a food animal was a major cause in developing the peculiar form of constitutionalism that would provide the basis for democracy and rule of law in the Anglo-Saxon countries.

They didn’t need to have large areas of forage to feed them, as was the case with cattle. Cattle were also necessary as draft animals and milk producers, so it was not a good practice to raise such a large animal simply to eat it.

In fact, it would not be until the development of the English longhorn in the eighteenth century that people would have a specialized breed of beef cattle.

Pigs fed us through the generations. If your ancestors were from Europe and were of  the Christian faith, they most likely knew the taste of pork but never knew the taste of beef.

***

Of course, my grandpa told us that they used to eat ruffed grouse for Thanksgiving.  Having eaten that particular bird, I can say that they taste far better than either wild or domestic turkey.

Of course, I don’t think anyone has ever bred ruffed grouse in captivity. They are often quite curious  and easily-tamed birds, but their peculiar diet of buds is very hard to replicate in captivity.

Black-and-tan dapple dachshund. Photo by Erwin Loh.

From Dog World

Dachshund breeders in the UK and the Kennel Club are to be commended for this action.

Maybe the next step will be to allow dogs with somewhat longer legs so they don’t move around like weasels or mink. After all, this is still a working breed. The smallest doxies are supposed to go after rabbits in pipes and tunnels. Their small size has a function.

There is nothing wrong with this color in dachshunds. It just should be bred responsibly.

Important note: The dog above is a single-dapple. Her sire was a black-and-tan dapple (silver dapple in every country but the US) and her dam was a solid red.

Let’s hope other merle breed fanciers get their acts together.  Dapple and merle are the same color genetically.

Another breed that comes in merle (and may be a descendant of the Dachshund):

Blue merle Cardigan Welsh Corgi. Photo by Muu-karhu.

Source.

It’s Thanksgiving, so I have to do something on turkeys.

And turkeys, like a lot of gallinaceous birds, have these unique courtship motor patterns.

They do display them at relatively early age.

The adult version is far more dramatic:

Source

Sometimes hen turkeys will go into this same motor pattern and gobble:

Source.

Now, turkeys can be made to gobble at virtually any weird sound, and it is also easy to get them to puff up and display.

However, the actual strutting behavior is a courtship motor pattern.

Of course, it is nothing like the courship motor patterns of the sage grouse, which is far more bizarre. The following was filmed using a “Fembot” sage grouse hen:

Source.

Over the generations,  certain hens in various chicken-like birds have selected for unusual motor patterns in their mates.   If a male can develop such weird behavior and have such extravagant display plumage, he must be a healthy bird with good genes to pass onto the next generation. Of course, she’s not reasoning that way, but her brain is wired to find these features attractive or at least somewhat novel. Eventually, the “aesethic sense” becomes as deeply ingrained in her DNA as the display motor pattern is in the male.