Jasper's Dad sent this to me and I thought you might enjoy reading it, yoo!
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I forgot to tell you about a couple of other things with Jasper in my last message... Since we can only get to the dog park once a week (and sometimes less if the weather has been really bad), I've been trying to get good exercise for him in other ways. Of course, nothing takes the place of a good extended run at the dog park (yesterday we went there and I think the only times he stopped running during the first 30 minutes were when he went into an occasional "puppy bow" to entice another dog to play). But when I can't get to the dog park, I improvise with games in the backyard, supplementing his daily walk.

One aspect I've added to his daily walk, based on reading one of Cesar Milan's (the dog whisperer) books, is carrying a light dog pack. His suggestion is that if you have a high energy dog and you can't let them run flat out, you can have them do some "carrying work" which adds a degree of physical and psychological challenge. My son, John, bought the Kelty dog pack pictured below for Jasper's Christmas present and we've been using it over the last few weeks. It's a saddlebag arrangement (a bag on each side of the dog's body to equally distribute the weight) and I put a one pound bag of rice on each side so that Jasper's carrying a little over 2 lbs total. He doesn't seem to mind it and he's a much better loose leash walker with it on. I get the impression that he is getting more challenging exercise by doing this carrying and I'm keeping the weight light (the recommendation was 10% of the dog's body weight or less). I'd never have him wearing this during field work, but for walks on a lead, it seems to be a great addition.

The other humorous anecdote I wanted to pass on is about our trip to Bass Pro last weekend. I needed to take Jasper with me to fit and purchase a new pair of dog booties for the last pheasant hunting trip of the season that we have planned for Jan 30th and 31st. Our outing on Jan 15th took us through some really rough terrain and the boots that he's been using all season were just shredded by the end of the day so a new pair was in order.

Bass Pro lets you bring your dog into the store, so Jasper and I made our way to the aisle where all of the dog equipment is located. Usually a task like that will take me less than 10 minutes of trying on a couple of different sizes and brands with Jasper and then making a decision. After about 30 minutes, Mary, who was on the lower level of the store was wondering where I had gotten off to. What happened was Jasper kept attracting a crowd! Every time I would start to fit a different set of boots on him, it seemed like a group of people who had passed the aisle would do a double take and then come over to talk - "What kind of dog is that?" "Can we come over and see your dog?" "What a neat looking dog!"

Jasper was quite the celebrity and fortunately he was very well behaved, soaking up all of that attention. I think there were probably six different groups of people that came up to us while we were doing our boot fitting that day. None of them had known about Vizslas prior to that, but all left with a very good impression of the breed - thanks to Jasper's good temperament and good looks!
 Best of luck with the upcoming dog shows! I'll let you know how Jasper closes out the pheasant season at the end of the month.
 Take care,  Brian