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not sure how many of you keep up with it but i found this of some intrest.
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not sure how many of you keep up with it but i found this of some intrest.
thanks for that Kawhia !!! I hadnt known Frank was doing a blog --France wow such a cool place to hang in the country
from the blog -----N O R T H S T R E A M
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Latest updates: June 11th 2014
The story of Lapphaugen's Moulin
I've just admired a beautiful young roe buck, coming out at the edge of a nearby forest, grazing in the paddock next to
our house. During my time in Denmark in the 1990s I used to hunt roe deer, using our well-trained English pointers to
push through the forestry blocks. I shot my first roe deer, brought out after excellent work by Agertoften Isabella.
Hunters are still the ones actively working to create habitat and good living conditions for the wild game animals
around us. Many people still haven't understood this. We certainly appreciate the beauty of these animals at least as
much as the non-hunting animal-lovers but we also participate in nature and are not solely spectators.
As I probably already have stated in the past, I started to enjoy cooking my wild game dishes because I was hunting &
fishing, while these days I harvest to be able to do my cooking. I wanted to take best possible care of the game I
brought home and create nice food. I take what I think I should, if I can, and harvesting of nature's surplus is neither
ugly nor cruel. I appreciate nature's beauty every day and the immense enjoyment just seems to increase with age.
One of the things I value highly about travel is experiencing different cuisine in different cultures and areas. I have a
fascination for the history of food, the use of local ingredients and day to day recipes. Whether the food is fancy or
peasant style I always seek taste and flavour to celebrate what we've brought home from nature's great cupboard.
Back home in New Zealand Craig has kept things up both in the field
and on the water. He borrowed Bella in early May so that neither of
them missed out on opening weekend just because I'm away. They had
a good weekend with excellent work on Cali quail, brown quail and
pheasants. We were in Portugal at the time and I must admit to having
sent some longing thoughts back to NZ then.
I'm also keeping an eye out for pointer & setter material on these travels. I've had some pointer lines in my mind
which I've known and seen a couple of decades ago. During my visits in Portugal and Spain during this trip I have
had reinforced some of my past observations. I envisage some exciting projects could develop from this. So this is
another great pleasure for me to be back in Europe and know I haven't completely lost touch with the pointers.
Regarding the English setters in my home country of Norway I am amongst a group of enthusiasts with some grave
concerns about the dictatorial health focus practised. The Norwegian English setter population has for the past
century benefited from the passionate and insightful work by some outstanding breeders, who've been hunters as
much as they've been dog people with an eye for great gundogs. Computer stats can be a great tool in assisting a
breeder to assess potential breeding dogs and their families. However, it has been misused for over 30 years by
counting hip-dysplasia references left, right & centre and thereby dropping valuable breeding dogs/lines without
consideration for environmental influence and the fact that hereditary patterns are very complicated. The strict
HD-regime embraced in Norway for so long has contributed little or nothing to limit the number of dogs developing
dysplasia. It has been a costly affair which has been fruitful only for the veterinarians.
Some of us have always understood that finding the two most ideal mating partners is a challenge and that particular
dogs do matter. A brother or son or uncle is not equal. Other potential health defects have caused further
restrictions to the same gene pool, which gets narrower by the day. The latest fashion in Norwegian English setter
breeding is PRA (progressive retinal atrophy). Many dogs carry the gene but relatively few are affected by it. In
severe cases some dogs develop blindness but usually in later stages of life. However, by that stage numerous other
health issues are just as likely. If you breed a PRA carrier with a non-carrier then there won't be any affected pups. If
you breed a carrier with another carrier you may or you may not get affected off-spring. The Norwegian vets (who
shouldn't be allowed anywhere near any kind of animal breeding) have got a new golden calf they can dance
around. The Norwegian solution is expanded testing of puppies and adult dogs and simply to ban mating two
carriers. With the amount of dogs affected they're further tying arms & legs of breeders wanting to breed the best
possible working setters. In the end none of us want sick dogs but the fascism seen here keeps slicing away huge
chunks of breeding material, which in the end might give a population with very few PRA carriers but in the process
we degrade the high flying English setter to just a mere dog with lesser quality than what breeders before us
created. Restrictions and prohibitions and fast-disappearing gene pools are no benefits for serious breeders, who
should be able to breed according to their best judgement and deal with potential carriers or potential sick dogs the
way we've always had to. It is still the same way we're dealing with other severe defects, often strongly hereditary, in
which we can still be allowed to put a quality stamp on excellent bird dogs with strong natural abilities.