Foreword by Retriever
Journal editor-at-large E. Donnall Thomas Jr.:
"Wallace's scientific background
is evident throughout Biography
of a Bird Dog, in which he records with Proustian
attention to detail the first half year in the life
of Valley Girl, his female black Lab...the text is
a celebration... Anyone...will understand and appreciate
the care and insight Garry Wallace has brought to
bear upon this heartfelt project."
~ E. Donnall Thomas Jr.
(to read more of the
Foreword, please click here)
Author Garry Wallace tells of his experience
training VG (Valley Girl) to be a bird dog. VG is an
AKC registered female Labrador retriever, born May 10,
2003. For the next eight months, Wallace kept a daily
journal he titled “Project VG,” in which
he recorded the events that stuck in his mind: stages
in the pup’s development; her harassment of the
author’s faithful, nine-year-old retriever, Ebenezer;
the pup’s successes and failures; the author’s
satisfactions and frustrations with VG’s progress;
and the sadness of Ebenezer’s slow decline. A
day or two after each journal entry, Wallace hand-wrote
the first, rough draft of what became Biography of a
Bird Dog (A Labrador Retriever in Wyoming). To help
facilitate his recollection of events and have a photo
album of VG’s life, Wallace purchased a digital
camera that captured still images and short movies of
VG and Ebenezer, the author’s two Wyoming dogs.
As time went on and the manuscript grew
to almost 1000 pages, Wallace began the mind-boggling
process of cutting the story down to size. If he could
not find an apt title for the chapter, he eliminated
it from the book. As he fine-tuned the writing, the
author—a student of philosophy and neuroscience—discovered
that the story of VG’s early life was nothing
less than a lesson in thought and mind, in both dogs
and in people. Not only did Wallace find a way to express
his philosophy of life as he told VG’s story,
but he also learned why dogs are so important in people’s
lives, as he writes in the book, “Dogs are man’s
best friends for a reason.”
Biography of a Bird Dog is not a training
manual, but it surely would be of interest to anyone
preparing to train a dog for upland bird and waterfowl
hunting. So, what is Biography of a Bird Dog? It is
a nearly seamless story of a man’s attempt to
help his pup achieve the potential of her breed, that
is, to be an accomplished Labrador Retriever. That this
story takes place in Wyoming is, well, icing on the
cake. Wyoming is the kind of place where a dog can be
a dog and a man can be a somewhat wild man.
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