Population geneticist Federico Calboli is a frequent and outspoken commenter at Q. I sent him the material below even before I blogged it. Here, with his permission, are his thoughts. As he is not affiliated with any breeding organization his freedom from bias is clear. If you believe that simply picking from two healthy parents …
Author: Steve Bodio
Clear Thinking on Genetic Diversity
Every breeder of domestic animals with a closed studbook should read this, all of it. Most important is the section the writer, Jeffrey Bragg, calls Principles for the Breeder. (MANY thanks to Daniela Imre). “The great majority of dog breeds have been bred within a completely closed studbook for sixty to a hundred years or …
True Quote
“Reviewing is a whole-time job with a half-time salary.” (Cyril Connolly) Half would sound pretty good to me.
Wild Things
Tazi puppies are many things, but rarely restful or peaceable. As Libby says, they are not beginners’ dogs. Though I maintain they are not TOO bad. I know, one was called “The Shredder” and one of my favorites destroyed seven Bonsai plants I had been nursing for years because she was jealous (I watered them) …
Bonus Photo
… from John Brandt’s Horned Giants: Father Anderson Bakewell, S.J., my Explorers Club mentor, with .416 Rigby “Rifle for Heavy Game” and bison from Alaska’s Delta River herd, the northernmost “plains”herd today, though not in the Pleistocene…
Manners
These hounds from about a century ago were more polite than mine (courtesy of James Wayne, who sold us the first Darne shotgun sometime well in… the last century). Click to see properly. Lily the Dachs had, and Warren’s Tazi granddogs show good manners though…
Run
The following will need little comment, but it is unusually illustrative. The little red tazi with the gray face is Larissa, an Almaty dog in origin, Ataika’s daughter and we hope the next mother- to- be. The cream male is Tavi, the intended father, a mix of Kazakh genes and Russian. What to notice is …
Was this ever used?!
Sent by Tim Gallagher but origin unknown: a suit for Siberian bear hunting. Two thoughts occur (1) you MUST be joking and (2) a lot of things eat porcupines, some with no ill effects, and leave the burred skin behind…
Belated…
Mini-reviews of new books by Friends- of- Q- Blog, with apologies for now- constant tardiness. Moro Rogers first published book is a graphic novel, City in the Desert . Moro may be trained as an animator, but she has a subtle mind and a deadly sense of humor, and, as one reviewer notes, there is …
Autumnal Quote
“For now he was awake and knew No one is ever spared except in dreams” W. H. Auden