Plato Buitron

Plato's 8th birthday is today. In human years, Plato, like me, is in his mid-forties. Dogs mature fairly fast, so their first two years are equivalent to about 10.5 human years. After that, there are about four human years in every dog year.

The American Kennel Club has an encyclopedia of dog breeds I looked through when I was picking out a dog. On the left of each page was a picture, and on the right the dogs were rated along various criteria. Things like the amount of grooming needed, how good they were with children and other pets, standards for the breed, and the like. I wanted a medium to large dog that was low maintenance and relatively smart. When I narrowed my choices to a handful of breeds, I read that German Shorthaired Pointers "crave instruction." It was everything I wanted in a relationship.

I got Plato from a guy in Wilmington who used his GSP for hunting. Of the eight puppies in the litter, Plato was the only one without a saddle patch. When I picked him out he was only 4 weeks old and his tail was already docked. In the past, landed gentry kept separate dogs for scenting, pointing, and retrieving. In the 19th century Germany instituted a dog tax, so the Spanish Pointer was cross bred with a scent hound, blood hound, water dog, and a retreiver, creating an all purpose gun dog. They tend to be talkers, meaning they yowl, groan, whine, bark and yelp, depending on the circumstances.

The males are suppsed to top out at 70 lbs., which means Plato would not meet AKC standards if shown (he's about 78 lbs. and 27" at the withers). A couple years back at High Desert Test Sites, I met an older woman who kept GSPs, and she said the dogs were bred larger in the 30's and 40's. So perhaps plato is a bit of an atavist.

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