DONE!!!

Yes indeed, after 12 years, tens of thousands of miles, thousands of emails, hundreds of interviews a dozen pairs of boots and just as many credit cards, that beast of a book, Pointing Dogs, Volume One: The Continentals is done.

Over the many years it took me to write the book, I've had the pleasure of seeing and photographing some amazing dogs, often against a background of breathtaking scenery while hunting elusive game. But an even greater reward has been meeting and learning from people who are truly dedicated to their breed of choice and passionate about its hunting heritage. I am also very grateful for the support I've received from readers and followers of this blog. I thank you all for the questions and comments you've sent me and for the swift kicks in the ass you've given me to finish the darn book!

On Thursday I will be in Altona, Manitoba watching the first copies of the book roll off the printing press. About a week later I will begin shipping them. I've already started taking pre-orders on the new website and have even set up a brand new blog.

And with that, I will be closing this blog. But don't worry, all the posts from the ChiendogBlog can be found on the new Pointing Dog Blog and will remain there, along with lots of new rants, raves, news and views on the world of pointing dogs.

So please join me there and don't be shy, comments are always welcome!

In the meantime...

I've had quite a few inquiries about how the Mega Book Project from Hell® is progressing so I thought I would post a quick update.

Pointing Dogs Volume One: The Continentals is now at Friesen's Printing sitting patiently in the "on deck" position. Early next week they will send me a proof copy of the entire book and a high-res version of the book cover. As soon as I give those two items the green light, the fine folks down at Friesens will press the shiny red "GO" button on the humungous printing machine! A week or two later, the book will be delivered to our storage facility, probably by some sort of gigantic truck with reinforced axles and a sign on the front saying "wide load".

Currently, I am finalizing a brand new website and hatching a marketing plan that will be launched in the first week of May. So stay tuned for all kinds of stuff coming from Dog Willing Publications to a forum, facebook page, website and magazine near you.

Now, in the meantime how about some light entertainment for your viewing pleasure? Here is my greatest youtube hit ( over 18 thousand views!). Please forgive my feeble video skills and "great face for radio" face and just sit back and enjoy some grouse hunting with Henri, Souris and Uma!

Important Rule for Writers # 32

"Proofread carefully to see if you any words out."



Its 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 and my dog Henri (he is responsible for the ripped pages that now fill the bottom of the canvas). 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.

MISSED IT BY that MUCH!!

Q: Hey, February has come and gone, and still NO BOOK? What’s the holdup!?!
A: Murphy. Yes, that Murphy. The one with a law named after him that says: "If anything can go wrong, it will."

Technical issues? Check. Darn computers! You’d think that with all their secret pixie dust and magic electrons, they would never do us wrong.....Wrong.

Health issues? Check. I spent most of the weekend at the emergency vet clinic while one of my dogs underwent surgery to remove some kind of towel he ate! Good timing Henri! Oh, and after paying the good Doctor for his emergency services, my credit card is now in the intensive care ward, with some kind of banker-priest standing by, just in case.

Drama? Check. Don’t ask. Let's just say that I now have 30% less hair and my complexion has taken on a whole new level of fish-belly pallor.

Weather? Check. My outside thermometer quit last week. Just got up and left. It was last seen boarding a flight to ANYWHERE but here. But I must say, today it seems a bit warmer. We may get up to minus 20 this afternoon and the weatherman just downgraded the blizzard warning to “apocalypse-lite.”

Q: So when the book will be done!?!
A: Despite all the setbacks, the book is actually written, proofed, poked, prodded and massaged into super-fine form. It fact, it is basically done. The only things remaining are a few final tweaks to some photos--we were having color issues with one of my computers. Everything should be at the printer's by March 21, and the book should start shipping a couple of weeks after that.

Q: Is there any silver lining to all this?
A: Yes indeed! In order to solve one of the technical/design issues we had, we decided to actually expand the book. It is now a massive 384 pages! And at last count, there were over 400 photos with descriptions of over 50 different breeds, dozens of expert contributions, charts, graphs, appendices, an extensive bibliography, glossary and index. In fact, it is so big now that if you plan to order a copy, you may want to consider adding a buttress or two to the coffee table it will sit on.

And speaking of ordering, a brand new www.dogwilling.ca website will be launched in the next couple of weeks. You will be able to order the book directly from the site for quick convenient shipping to your front door (I hope you have a sturdy mail carrier!).

Stay tuned.

Wheels are in motion.

I just hope Murphy is on vacation!

An English system for German dogs?

Recently, a thread was started on the Working HPR gundog forum about the creation of a club for German hunting dog breeds in the United Kingdom. I found the subject very interesting and offered the following observations:

The development of our pointing breeds, British and continental, and the breeding, testing and registration systems we've invented for them has followed the ebb and flow of various cultural, social and political forces. Let's not forget that all the pointing breeds started in southern europe. They then spread across the continent and into the UK in the 1600s (longhaired setting dogs) and after the War of Spanish succession in 1715 (short haired pointing dogs "braque" and "old spanish pointers").Then for the next century and a half, they sort of languished on the continent, taking on regional characteristics but not really advancing beyond the fairly primitive model from the south.



Meanwhile in the UK, the 1700s and 1800s were years of unbridled innovation and advancement. Aided by the huge leap forward in livestock breeding techniques pioneered by Robert Bakewell in the 1770s and driven by the fierce competition among the growing class of nouveau riche, the landed gentry and various other social climbers, pointing dog development shifted into high gear. British innovation, a genius for animal husbandry and the free enterprise, competitive society transformed the imported long-haired setting dogs and short-haired pointing dogs into the various Setters and the Pointer. And after the fall of Napoleon in 1815, these new and improved versions of the old breeds returned to the land of their ancestors. When they did, it was as if a bomb had gone of on the continental sporting scene.


It is hard to overemphasis the impact. British Pointers and Setters were light years ahead of the continental breeds and stunned the dog-men of the day. Breeders across the continent stampeded to either get some of the dogs for themselves or to breed their dogs to them. Some even admitted it, many, due to nationalism and other social restrictions, did not. But it is safe to say that there is not a single, solitary pointing breed on the continent that does not have at least a drop or two of British blood in it. Some are clearly half breeds, others, more like 9/10th breeds.

The British influence is still very strong to this day. The English setter is the most popular pointing breed in France and Italy where over 20 thousand (!) are bred each year. Pointers are very popular everywhere and are still used (by the light of the moon) to add speed, range and nose to many breeds. The British competitive system of field trials and dog shows still dominates in many countries and now regularly produces Setters and Pointers that would run circles around their relatives back in the UK.

So what happened?

Why are we now discussing setting up a German based non-competitive system in the UK? How did the Brits go from absolute monarchs of the pointing dog kingdom to net importers of types of dogs that the average 19th century English Sportsman would have considered curiosities at best, and a wooly-haired pointing pigs at worst?




Well it turns out that the "wooly-haired pointing pigs" were nothing of the sort. When the British breeds made their way to the continent and rocked the world of hunters and breeders everywhere, those breeders and hunters set their sights on building an even better mousetrap. Some, like the French, Italians, Dutch, Danish adopted the British competitive system of trials and shows. Today they produce some of the best pointing dogs in the world. The Germans, Czechs, Slovaks and Hungarians came up with their own system...one of non-competitive tests. And they did indeed build a better mousetrap for the average hunter in those countries who wanted more of a Swiss Army Knife do-it-all kind of dog.

Meanwhile, back in Jolly Old England, it was the British turn to let their pointing breeds languish. Pointers and Setters split into (mainly) show and (very few) field lines and the average British rough shooter migrated to spaniels and labs. Where there were once hundreds of kennels and dozens of lines of working Pointers and Setters, there a now a handful.

Jump forward a couple of world wars and decades of British servicemen and women stationed on the continent and we find the continental breeds showing up more and more in the UK. Over the years they had been transformed by continental breeders from "wooly-haired pointing pigs" to fantastic do-it-all dogs that the Brits christened "HPRs". And, as with the British dogs in the late 1800s, they came with a new approach to breeding and selection: the non-competitive test. They rekindled interest in pointing dogs in the UK but found themselves a sort of square peg in a round hole. They were breeds from a system that was not based on field trials and dogs shows, but that was the only venue open to them in the UK. So they adapted. Some, like the Weimaraner, became a show dog and couch potato, others like the GSP managed to retain some working ability, but are not tested for the same things or to the same standards as in Germany.

So here we are today, wondering what sort of scheme or system can be established that will reconcile the different cultures, types of dogs and styles of hunting so that British sportsmen and woman can take full advantage of what has been imported from the continent.

My answer is "I don't know". One could look at the North American model NAVHDA etc. and go from there. One could just import, wholesale, the German model like they and others did in the late 1800s with the British model of field trials and shows. But I am not British and I have no idea what sort of thing would stimulate enough interest and gain enough gravitas to succeed. But I am generally an optimist, so I do believe that a system could be created or imported.

But there is a rub... a big rub. And I hate to end these sorts of rants on a negative note. But I fear that the age of innovation and excellence in pointing dog breeding has come to an end. The very hunting culture for which our dogs were designed is in slow but steady decline. The doors have long been shut to new breeds or new initiatives. Let's face it, the very essence of kennel clubs is not innovation, evolution or progress, but in fact the exact opposite. They are the social equivalent of aspic in which we seek to seal our breeds "as is" forever and ever, despite paying lip service to the idea of "improving" them. The last great systemic shakeup in pointing dogs, I believe, was the creation of NAVHDA in the very early 1970s and the creation of North America chapters of the German clubs in the 70s and 80s. There are still some echos of that change occurring today, the VHDF and other German based clubs are still getting up and running, but I think that is about it.

From here on out, despite all the improved communication the Internet has brought us and despite the increased exchange of genetic material thanks to cheap travel and pet passports, inevitably, pointing dog culture will become more and more marginalized until it is truly a niche within a niche within a niche.

So does that mean one should not try to create a British system for HPR evaluation? No. Does it mean no one should try to form a UK chapter for a German breed? No.

What it means is that the task will become more difficult every year. So if you are going to do it, do it now. None of us is getting any younger -- when was the last time you saw a group of 20 somethings discussing dogs and hunting and testing and trials?-- and as the clock ticks on the fate of hunting in many regions, this may be the last chance continental pointing dogs in the UK have of getting their act together.

And now for something photo-related

When I am not in out in the field with my dogs, I spend much of my time in the darkroom working with old-school photographic papers and chemicals. And when I say old school, I mean really old school.... as in mid-1880's-0ld-school.

One of my favorite techniques is known as platinum/palladium printing. In a nutshell, it means coating cotton paper, by hand, with solutions of platinum and palladium salts and then exposing the paper, under a negative, to ultraviolet light. The result is a warm-toned photographic image of delicate, subtle tone. The photo of Felix and Souris above is a platinum print. On screen it looks OK, but the print is really something to behold if I do say so myself.

A few years ago, I worked out a method to coat kind of paper that everyone thought would never work. I then wrote a small "how to" booklet to share the technique with other platinum/palladium printing enthusiasts. I sold a fair number of the booklet and got some great feedback from the folks that tried my technique.

Recently, I revised the booklet and had it completely redesigned. Today, I am happy to announce that it is now available for purchase on line!

It is called Vouloir C'est Pouvoir which means "Where there is a will there is a way" and is available through the fine folks at Blurb. You can get a sneak preview below and if you want to order one as a stocking stuffer for the old school photo dweeb in the family, just click that shiny "buy" button....you know you want to!

Vouloir C'est Pouvoir by Craig Koshyk | Make Your Own Book

Photos, finally!!

Just got a note from our Dutch friends Marjolein and Roel. They are now back in Holland with a head full of hunting memories and two dogs that have certainly earned a huge bag of biscuits for all their hard work in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and North Dakota.

I've been very busy putting the finishing touches on the massive never ending book project, but took some time off to upload some photos from the season.

Click the photo of Henri pointing or on the title of this post to view the gallery.

Enjoy!