SUMMARY: Dog-breed book available online
Once upon a time, I wanted to create my own book, or maybe web site, about dog breeds. I had actually started it, but then I discovered Wikipedia and devoted 2 years to that project, expanding what was at that time an extremely sparse collection of articles about dog breeds. I also photographed various breeds (and mixes) at agility trials and uploaded the photos to Wikipedia.
You can view my photos on Wikipedia here.
Read Wikipedia's article on dog agility, which I originally largely wrote (but which has been expanded & edited over time). I think it's a pretty darned good article. Lots of things are missing from the separate history article and separate "agility worldwide" article, though. Help if you can! Anyone can edit.
Check out WP's list of dog breeds; you can go to each article from there. I can't claim to be the primary author on any of them any more, as they've changed so much. Sometimes individual pet owners add text that doesn't apply to the breed as a whole (my favorite: "Shelties generally do not like to fetch"). I used to spend a lot of time cleaning that up, but now I blog instead. (grin) Help if you can! Anyone can edit.
The big problem is that the info is across so many different pages. If you want to search for some breed or feature within only the dog articles, you can't. Wouldn't it be nice to have an electronic book that you could search?
Alex Harris (not someone I know--found me on Wikipedia) has created an ebook of dog breeds, Dogs of the World, for $9.95. He created his own text from several sources. His primary source for photos was Wikipedia, and he used several of mine (with permission). Here's a partial sample page with one of my photos; this is Honey, who just died suddenly last month of hemangiosarcoma, the same thing that killed my Remington.
It's a work of love, privately published, so it won't have the polish of breed books found at the book store. But it is electronic, so you can have it on your computer. And it has my photos in it (and you can search my name once you've got it open). I receive no payment for purchases of this book. I'm just happy to pass the info along. And, since this is an agility blog, here's the first of two pages about the Border Collie, as a sample (not my photo).
Well that is just weird because I knew a guy named Alex Harris back when I was in college at the Univ. of Illinios in Champaign. I think he moved to Seattle in the mid-80's then maybe was living in China for a bit. Every few years I have an 'I wonder whatever happened to Alex' moment then I forget all about it.
ReplyDeleteIt must be such a common name, I can't imagine Alex is somehow involved in making a dog book, he was more into the music thing but then I'll bet he'd say the same about me and dog agility. Funny anyway to think about old Alex again.
Very cool they are using your photos.