A litter of Blizzard's Huntmore Llewellin puppies is an investment:  a lifetime in the grouse woods, measuring the performance of a succession of benign to brilliant setters over some of the toughest Appalachian terrain, on one of the most difficult game birds for a pointing dog to handle.  Factor in the time.  The money.  The sacrifice and successes.  The heartbreaks.  All the planning and "intelligent guessing,"  the selection of bloodstock, the mating, the pregnancy, the delivery.

And then the litter.  Time in the whelping box, studying how each puppy handles everything from nursing to pecking order with its siblings to conformation, personality, at some point even markings.

Then those first walks afield, watching how puppy "toddlers" sort out their world.  Which ones seem the boldest, the most inquisitive?  Which ones seem forever to be questing for something, anything, from bugs to butterflies to song birds?  In quality, even litters like those produced by the Jacobs family, it becomes a question of degrees...of sooner.  More quickly.  More naturally.  More assertively.  A more appealing head.  A more athletic carriage or more attractive demeanor.  In the end, it's hair splitting in a good litter, white setter hair.  That's cutting it pretty fine.

Only the most discerning eye can sort through batches of pups like these and be confident of thinking he or she might likely know how the individuals scrambling underfoot, chasing each other's tails, bouncing after a blown leaf, would turn out, given the chance each of these pup's deserves.

After six weeks of this, eights weeks of this, 12 weeks - you think you know some things.  If you've been at this as long and with the analytical mind of Eric Jacobs, you do know some things.  Or at least you're convinced that you're pretty sure that the odds are that such and such puppy just might prove out a certain way.  Probably.

So someone with the deep hunting, training, and breeding background of Eric Jacobs makes informed decisions and acts on them, helping fit individual puppies to individual clients' expressed preferences, hunting styles, personalities.  But in every litter, there is a puppy or several puppies, that strike a particular chord with Eric through manner or movement or ease of learning curve.

For the Bella - Rock litter, it was a strapping chestnut tricolor, bright, bold, brawling, beautiful... with that almost indefinable presence that drew Eric, the boys and Anna to him whenever they mixed with the litter.  A puppy that seems to capture the best of both sire and dam.  The one that Eric knows that he thinks he knows has all the right stuff to grow into the kind of Appalachian grouse dog that could hold up against the uncompromising standards that built this breeding program.

But the reality of the breeder determined to stay meticulously small is that sometimes even the most promising of puppies needs to awarded to a hand-picked home where the Jacobs family believes it will get the optimum opportunity to prove out all that potential.  This very special little guy is available to the best possible new owner by private treaty.  Serious inquiries can be made at ericj172@windstream.net .