 Cliff, this is just awesome all the way around. Congratulations to you and your super tracking partner Tasha! Good girl, Tasha! I will write it up, a really hard track with track 1.94 miles and ran him to the bank of the Mississippi River. What a great way to end the season. - Cliff Shrader, LA
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This afternoon, Viljo and Taya were playing hard and Taya dashed under the dining table. She was effectively surrounded by table legs and chair legs and rungs. She was daring Viljo to come in after her. Queen of the Fort, a version of King of the Hill. As I watched, Viljo picked up what is left of some stuffed toy they have demolished and tossed it in the air. Taya watched it hit the carpet while Viljo watched Taya. He was using it to entice her to come out into the open! Taya wanted that thing and tensed as if to go after it, but in the end, she didn't fall for it. But I thought it was quite clever of V to do this!
I came out of the kitchen this morning to see Owl watching KITTY TV - again. He is obsessed with the star of that show; never misses an episode if he can help it. Thinking that my view of the dog and cat 'lineup' was interesting, I went to get my camera. No concerns that Owl would move. He would be watching as long as Kiki was on screen! I have been thinking about my nephew Michael Nance ever since I realized, after the fact, that his 30th Birthday was this month. Today's throwback Thursday photo, then, had to be one of Michael. Here he is with me in 1996. Michael, age 12, had flown by himself from South Carolina so that we could participate in the Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure that year. GOBA is an annual event with more than 2000 cyclists riding a week-long tour of Ohio. Starting June 16, the '96 GOBA tour began at the county fairgrounds in Mansfield, Ohio, traveled a circuitous northeastern route up to Cedar Point on Lake Erie, then a southwestern circuit which ended in Mansfield again on 22 June. 350 miles altogether, we saw a lot of Ohio and it is a great state. (Every state is great if we really see something of it!) This photo was taken at Seneca Caverns which was a stop on the tour. Happy 30th Birthday, Michael! I see a German Chocolate Cake in your near future.  In the aftermath of the proposed (and rescinded) revision to our breed Standard this month, I have finished an article expressing my thoughts about piebald. It was important for me to do it. Some things need to be said.  a click on the photo will take you to the article Viljo has so many facets of character that I don't really just want to say that he is funny. But he IS funny. He reminds me of Karl in that respect. Like some people, I guess, Viljo strikes me as humorous and makes me laugh whether he intends to or not. He is FUN and I love having him around. Here is a small album of Viljo from today. There might have been a few more photos. But as Viljo said in the last one below, I am wondering if you would be so good as to put that camera away now. And so I have. At least for today! In this weather, my dogs are getting more chew time than usual. After lunch, I gave them American-made rawhide to chew for 30 minutes so that I could get some stuff done. They started in on their rawhides, I watched 'em for a minute and decided to take photos. There went my 30 minutes! The photos are interesting from a lighting perspective. All of them were taken in the same room. As I have said before, the coloration of red dogs is an evolving, revolving light show anyway, and different lighting makes the red tones even more interesting. The 1st and 3rd photos, the older Owl and Nexus, have more artificial lighting, because Owl claimed the couch and Nexus the dog bed which are further from the patio door. 2nd and 4th photos, Taya and Viljo, were taken on the carpet nearer the natural lighting from the glass door. Natural light is really beautiful, isn't it. Hey, Anna Knoll in Mississippi, have I got a snowball for you! Taya also loves this stuff. You can come up here and the two of you can go dashing through the snow. This afternoon after it stopped snowing, the wind became stronger and I looked out and watched snow cyclones dance! I bundled up (way, way up!), and went out into the frigid air and took something like 120 photos under an ever-changing sky. These are my Pick Four. I love living up high but there's a whole lot of wind crossing these hills! How artistically magnificent this is! The photo and the puppies belong to Tor Johansen of Norway. 
What a phenomenal early-training concept! I see in Comments that it is criticized quite a bit as being too hard on young bodies. I guess I have to ask those folks if they have seen puppies play! Post by working-dog.eu. Nope, I said 101! I love to read. Over many years, though, I have collected far too many books. All the bookshelves are overflowing and there are stacks of books too many other places. On January 1, I began the slow and sometimes painful process of re-homing books. My original goal was to move 50% of them on to other people. I have revised that to 30%, at least until after I have been through all my books one time! Tonight I reached the milestone of 100 books that are no longer 'mine' and have gone OUT THE DOOR. I have many, many more books to sort through but it feels good to get this far down the path to a reasonable number. 
3/4 of my canine cheering section - Owl, flanked by Taya (left) and Nexus
Cousin Bossa was back High, stayed High after additional runs in 2nd and 4th series, and won the class of 18 Open Bitches at the National field trial in California today! The trial was run on hare (jackrabbits) in Vacaville, California. The win and the 18 points also earned Bossa the title Field Champion. AND she won the run for Best Open! Very well done! 
Jackrabbit in Vacaville, photo courtesy of the Dachshund Fanciers of Southwestern Washington
Congratulations to Bossa and her owner/handlers John Willmore and Diane Webb. Also to her breederMay-Gun Bandinge of Gotland and to Marie Gadolin of Sweden.
Kudos to all of you! Svante is father of Viljo. Another recovered deer for Svante! It was quick job in freezing weather, -17 degrees. But luckily it was a good shot and deer was close so we did not freeze. It was hunter's first deer so he was so happy Svante found it. - Tia Eskelinen, Finland Congratulations to all of you!
[-17 Celsius = 1 degree Fahrenheit] I posted this on Facebook for 'throwback Thursday.'  Marta's second (and last) litter was by the Swedish import Hound's Kashmir who was out of venerable old hunting lines. Four males and three females were born in June of 2004. It was my O litter and I was working on coming up with O names. These were days before my photography went digital, so I had to wait to see photos. When I got this batch, I studied one particular photo of the four males together. The expression of one pup caught my eye. I said, hmmm, he looks like a wise little owl. Which is true to this day. I'm pretty sure you will know which one I am talking about. Manu claiming his deer and rightfully so!  This is 15 months old longhaired dachshund Zingarese Aznavour today in Finland. The only dog accompanying the hunters, Manu located the deer in the forest and drove it to the shot.
Manu's owner is Antti Niskanen who also took the photo. The proud breeder is Sirpaleena Stubbe. Manu is grandson of Maxi-Tax Heracles. Heracles is brother of Hestia, Taya's grandmother. I posted some photos of Hestia two days ago. I didn't say then that Hestia and Heracles are grandkids of Nick v Dorndorf L. Thank you, Sirpaleena, for the photo! Svante recovered a wounded deer today. It was hit by a car yesterday and we followed it 4,5 km [2 miles] and 1,5 hours. My super boy. Now we are wet and tired and happy and both of us will be in sauna very soon. - Tia Eskelinen, Finland Congratulations, Tia and Svante!
After I posted the photo of Siiri yesterday, her owner Ilse Kokkonen sent this picture that I have not seen before. It was taken this past August during a duck hunt, which Siiri loves to do. Sirri is paternal grandmother of the youngsters Taya, Tasha, and Thor, who also love to swim and are steady to gun. You can see photos of Taya's First Swim at age 10 weeks.  Here was today's contribution to Facebook's throwback Thursday.  The recent 'arctic blast' had me buying Sterno in case electric power went out and I wanted to heat water. I love Sterno. It is what I used to heat water on nearly the entire Appalachian Trail after I sent my little backpacking stove home in disgust. You know it's been cold when you take the dogs out and "9 degrees, feels like -1" feels downright warm. You know it's been cold when Weather cast says "Not as cold with lows around 3 above" makes you smile in gratitude! You know it's been cold when the dog's water bowl freezes on the kitchen floor. Found out that I can heat for 10 below and I can heat for 30 mile per hour winds but not for both! We're good here, hope the same is true for everyone else and your animals.
 Idle hands are the devil's workshop. This is what happens when your tracking dog goes an entire weekend without tracking! Tasha tracks down and finds my deer hair identification cards! - Cliff Shrader, LA Those took a bit of time and effort to put together. I'm glad that she did not do much damage to your 'cheat sheets!'
It is throwback Thursday again!  My mother Emma, sister Karen, and me in Germany in 1961. My mother had been in the States a few years before and had become a naturalized citizen. Karen and I had not yet been to the US but it wouldn't be long before we set sail. This was our passport photo. Karen had the mumps!
Happy New Year! I chose this wonderful graphic because my dream vacation is getting on a horse and walking him away from civilization for a week. Somewhere in a western state, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Texas, I'm not picky. I'm going to check some places out. Other than that, I have sat down to think about goals for this year. So far, the page is blank! I am a little tired. Need more coffee. But not too much caffeine or the goals list will be galloping into the sunset... I hope your dreams for 2014 come true. 
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