I've photoshopped and "gloomyfied" it a bit, but the resemblance is obvious. People here didn't grow up with Hitchcock, or I'd have heard more of this already.
The Derby Test is a breed test along with a natural ability test. It is used to determine the puppy’s inclination in the most important field categories and to assess the breeding values of the puppy’s parents. This test serves its purpose best when on one hand the training and preparation of the puppy are sufficiently advanced to show his natural abilities, but on the other hand, the handlers influence does not overly cover or mask the puppy’s natural ability. From past experience, testing on the spring field best shows the dogs natural abilities regarding the acuity of nose, finding ability, a systematic scent-oriented and keen search, as well as pointing and relocation of feathered game.
The Derby training will be most successful when the puppy’s passion for rabbits and their tracks has been sufficiently restrained during winter and early spring so that its attention can be introduced to game birds when they start pairing in spring before nesting. Therefore, Derby does not require work on the rabbits track. However, an occasionally-shown manner of hunting and occasional very good work on rabbit track will be noted. Requirements for a Derby are large fields, containing a sufficient number of game birds. The parents' breeding values are easier to recognize by testing as many littermates as possible.
Beatrix, Barno and Byörn vom Moosbach at their Derby trial, two more littermates were tested as well, all ended up within the "first prize" range.The Solms Test is a breeding test, an addition to and expansion of the spring Derby test. The purpose of the test, similar to the Derby, is to establish the level of the dog’s natural abilities in regards to suitability and future use in versatile hunting and breeding, as well as determination of the parents' breeding value. Particular attention is paid to mental stability. The young dog's training for practical use in hunting in field and water must be essentially completed by this time. The judges must be particularly careful to determine natural abilities that often are masked by the completed training.
Required for proper execution of the test are: large fields, containing a sufficient number of game birds and rabbits, and containing sufficiently large water area with ample reed growth. The recognition of the parents breeding value and that of the contesting dog is facilitated by testing as many littermates as possible.
Byörn (second from right) with four of his Moosbach B-litter mates, one from the Y- and two dogs from the A-litter. Another first prize! (A first prize in this context does not mean that the dog actually "won" the test, but that he ended up within a defined (high) range of marks.) Next to him is his litter sister Beatrix vom Moosbach. You could wear her as a trinket at a watch chain, but WOW! That little dog has the heart of a lion!The Verbands-Gebrauchs-Prüfung (VGP) is the JGHV [i.e. the German gundog umbrella organisation] utility test. This two-day test is a comprehensive evaluation of the performance and capabilities of a fully trained versatile hunting dog. Rubrics include work in the field, water and woods. In addition obedience and cooperation are of utmost importance. Blood tracking is also an important part of this test. Dogs successfully completing this test are highly revered by hunters that hunt with versatile hunting breeds. VCDKK Kurzhaar Handlers are encouraged to make their dog’s successful completion of the VGP a personal goal.Björni passed this test once again within the "first prize" range, his watch chain trinket sister Beatrix did not just that, but ended up as "Suchensieger", i.e. she got the highest total score PLUS the highest marks in the most relevant subjects of the test.
Richard Matt, the breeder of the peerless "vom Moosbach" dogs with Byörn and Beatrix at the VGP. Two VGP dogs not even quite 18 moths old, healthy and happy and at peace with the world.
Björni is retrieving the heavy fox over the obstacle, one of the make-it-or-break-it points at the VGP (they hate to retrieve the stinker), his leader/breeder watching to take it from him. The standard of obedience and cooperation those dogs have to meet is stunning.
Guderian? Rundstedt? And -- of all unlikely people -- ROMMEL as examples for "romantic evil"? For heaven's sake, Rommel looked exactly like what he was, the son of a small-town schoolteacher, Rundstedt looked exactly like what he was as well, namely the scion of a family of generations of dour Prussian career officers and Guderian, the only one of the three who shows a smidgeon of dash, looks basically too like what he was, namely the son of another Prussian officer, albeit from a lesser family. All three of them, whatever they may have in fact been, look like the archetype of sober, sexually continent men who go to bed early and take their holidays maybe not in Redcar, but in Warnemünde.La Style AnglaisBad behaviour is more interesting, more downright entertaining, than goodness and rectitude. This is a great gift to the Devil of course, but there's no getting away from it. Who ever heard of a soap opera about sober, sexually continent people who go to bed early and take their holidays in Redcar?
I think this explains why the generals of the Wehrmacht High Command, with their whiff of arrogance, cruelty and romantic evil, have always received more attention than their equivalents on the "good" Allied side. For every biography or television documentary about Viscount Slim, or Alexander of Tunis, there must be a dozen about Guderian or Von Rundstedt and a hundred about Rommel. Yet there were some eccentric and flamboyant characters among the commanders of the wartime British Army...
Rundstedt
Rommel
GuderianWell, thats a DSO and bar, OBE, MC, 4 ww2 stars (one with a bar, maybe 8th army?), ww1 pair with an MiD, and probably the silver jubilee medal. Don't think there are too many out there with that combination. He looks like a poof but the medal bar proves he's solid English oak.Indeed, and that's what men find so hard to understand. I see neither arrogance, nor cruelty, let alone romantic evil, in the German archetypes, just austereness, sobriety and professionalism, and I'd like to know how other women react to the different archetypes. My money is on the Brits, and not on the Germans in their demonstratively sober uniforms, who shout "straight" in marked difference to the elegant, flamboyant, dashing, bordering on the sexually ambiguous, Brits, who show more than just a whiff of arrogance, as I understand it.
Alas, with the red hackle on his bonnet and the sword guard of his claymore poking out of the bottom right this 'solid english oak' is most likely a scotsman :) the red hackle is the regimental distinction of the Blackwatch regiment.
The soldier in question is a Commanding Officer from the Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment). I believe he is Lt Col Critchley a very distinguished soldier and a gentleman. his son carried on the tradition of serving in the Regiment. Neither of which were in the least bit a poof nor English.
Why couldn't he have been a hero and a poof?
He was the great Halberdier enfant terrible of the First World War; the youngest company commander in the history of the Corps; the slowest to be promoted; often wounded, often decorated, recommended for the Victoria Cross, twice court martialled for disobedience to orders in the field, twice acquitted in recognition of the brilliant success of his independent actions; a legendary wielder of the entrenching tool; where lesser men collected helmets Ritchie-Hook once came back from a raid across no-man's-land with the dripping head of a German sentry in either hand.Frankly, that is not exactly a prime example of goodness and rectitude and a scenario in which the boringly sedate mugs of neither, Guderian, nor Rommel, nor Rundstedt seem quite to fit.
When she met the Taliban to 'hear their side of the story', the valiant freedom fighters, who would have thought so, kidnapped and the commander frequently raped her but not nearly enough because she wrote a book about it later and regurgitated it in chat shows (see picture) too. She still thinks (if one can call it that) that she was not taking unnecessary risks.“This story” Wilders said, “is a perfect illustration of the moral decline of our elites. They are so blinded by their own ideology that they turn a blind eye to the truth. Rape? Well, I would put this into perspective, says the leftist journalist: the Taliban are not monsters. Our elites prefer to deny reality rather than face it. Our elites, whether they are politicians, journalists, judges, subsidy gobblers or civil servants, have dumped common sense in order to deny reality. It is not just this raped journalist who is suffering from Stockholm syndrome, but the entire Dutch elite. The only moral reference they have is: do not irritate the Muslims - that is the one thing they will condemn.”So what did Joanie say:
"It's not black and white. It was the commander who raped me. I wanted to give vent to my hatred, to chop his head off and kick it off the cliff. He was schizophrenic: the following day, he said he was sorry. In that sort of situation - no matter how awful - you develop a bond with those people. You have to, if you want to survive. You could say the hatred and that bond go side by side."Very very mad Joanie said, too, that she was nevertheless shown respect.
"Just let me make one thing clear: I hate him for what he did to me. I hate him because he raped me. I was very, very mad and I wanted to kill him right away. But the day after it happened, he more or less asked me to forgive him. That was very confusing for me. It was a very schizophrenic situation because he had mood swings. I just had to cope with that. Normally you can show that you are angry but I couldn't of course. I had to get on with them. I just couldn't say to this commander what I was really thinking because then he would have killed me right away."
... that she found Khomeini intelligent, and “the most handsome old man I had ever met in my life. He resembled the ‘Moses’ sculpted by Michelangelo.” And, she said, Khomeini was “not a puppet like Arafat or Qaddafi or the many other dictators I met in the Islamic world. He was a sort of Pope, a sort of king—a real leader. And it did not take long to realize that in spite of his quiet appearance he represented the Robespierre or the Lenin of something which would go very far and would poison the world. People loved him too much. They saw in him another Prophet. Worse: a God.”And nobody laughed or expressed embarrassment after it appeared in The New Yorker in 2006. It was, after all, by "La Fallaci".
“The Belgians have done nothing. They said it was a matter for the Dutch. And the Dutch authorities said they never pay ransom. In Afghanistan they know well enough that Western governments pay up after an abduction. Germany, Italy and France have all paid ransoms.”Which may not be a terrific argument, but it at least reminds of another one of those vacuous, thrill-addicted women, the German archaeologist Susanne Osthoff, who made headlines in Germany some three years ago because the German government did indeed pay a hefty ransom when she was kidnapped in Iraq. She may serve as a case in the point I am trying to make, namely that the main issue about the Joanie de Rijkes of this world is not that they are dhimmis who gladly surrender to the powers out to destroy the West. Most of them do, but that is not the core of the problem. The more intelligent of this type of abandoned woman may as well turn out as an avid Islam-critic, as Fallaci did, but then, intelligence is a rare commodity.
So who is Susanne Osthoff? Early in 2006 her kidnapping in Iraq acquired notoriety. This, this and this entry from my other blog may serve as background information. I suddenly recalled Osthoff, when a commenter at VFR drew a (fatuous) analogy between Joanie de Rijke and Joan of Arc and I remembered that Osthoff, another one of those abandoned woman in need of a thrill, was compared to the French virgin saint as well. I wrote in 2006:
Thanks to Davids Medienkritik for ... the following gem:I wonder what makes people compare undutiful middle-aged crones out for a titillating experience to a teenage virgin out on a sacred mission and can only presume that it's utter lack of ethical and cultural discernment, but that isn't the point here anyway.
Yes, that's right! The (leftwing) Süddeutsche Zeitung shows Ms. "Embarrassment Personified" Osthoff clad as Joan of Arc! A woman with intimate ties to the Saddam "Plasticshredder" Hussein regime, a convert to Islam. As Joan of Arc. A Christian saint.
The point is, to me, that it is not dhimmitude, but the typical female self-centeredness, vanity and irresponsibility that often, not always, leads to dhimmitude and which is, in every single one of its manifestations, so destructive to society. In Susanne Osthoff it becomes particularly obvious, or is it just me who sees a woman who just adores posing in sexually ambiguous clothes, "protected" by noble savages, putting herself in harm's way by being at places where she had no business to be. Osthoff, who dumped her child at a boarding school when she ought to have looked after it herself, Osthoff who married an Arab (albeit not for long), Osthoff, who could have worked in a field of archaeology more appropriate for a woman, say, in Sweden, and if I were a cynic I'd say now that even there is a fair probability of being raped by a Muslim. Osthoff, who could have refrained from embarking on such a non-career at all, but searched for the stability of family life she so pooh-poohed.
Michelle Obama, the wife of the American president, shows us how to do it: Instead of growing flowers she turns the flower beds around the White House into vegetable patches. Thus, the ornamental beds are put to their best use and the vitamin-supply is ensured.This let me not just rummage for my beta-blockers but curse the fact that I had no emetic available or at least a stiff drink.
