Getting to the pointer
AND suddenly I see that some tremendous emotion has seized him, body and soul. His short bobbed tail begins to wave furiously. His head lunges forward... his body stretches and extends itself. He jumps hither and thither, and the next moment, with his nose still glued to the ground, he goes darting off. He has struck a scent. He is on the spoor of a rabbit.’
Thus wrote Thomas Mann in 1918 about his German shorthaired pointer (GSP), Bashan, in his little-known memoir. His dog is not alone in being seized by ‘tremendous emotion’. Mann’s memoir is an ode to an extraordinary breed, a love letter to a peculiarly singular line of dog. Arrestingly handsome and with an unmatched prey drive, GSPs are noble
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