Day 1

 

It was a rainy and cold Friday night as I was headed down to JFK to catch a flight to Portugal by way of Paris. The Paris leg cost me an extra 4 hours each direction but you gotta love those frequent flyer miles. As I was traveling through Westchester County New York en route to JFK, I saw what looked like a tailpipe come off the end of a car and spark along the road. Before I new it, the tailpipe turned out to be a truckbed load of pipes strew across the road with everyone swerving and slamming the brakes. With some bad luck, a pipe came shooting at me and impaled itself through the grill of the car and into the air conditioning condenser. Standing out in the cold rain tugging on a pipe stuck in the car is not what I would call a good start to a trip. As luck would have it a NY State Police came by and called a tow truck who managed to pull out the pipe with his truck and we arrived at the airport. I descended into the airport and borded the plane without further complication, grateful that no physical harm was done.

 

 

I arrived in Portugal late afternoon on Saturday and was politely greeted by two gentleman who were responsible for dropping off a rental car to me. I decided I’d drive north a bit and make a few calls from a service station to see if I could arrange to have dinner with one of the kennel owners and to make some plans for the downtime between my planned appointments. Well it looks like the luck I had at the beginning of the trip seemed to have followed me over to Portugal. Jorge Rodrigues had a case of bronchitis and Luis Fonseca and Carlos Figueira had taken a group trip to Spain to hunt with the dogs. I tried to contact Canil de Coa to see if he wanted a visitor from the US but he unfortunately spoke neither English nor French so communication was impossible. Since the rest of my business had to do in the north of the country, I decided to drive up to Figueira de Foz to eventually find accommodations.

 

As I was nearing Montemor-O-Velho en route to Figueira de Foz I decided to stop in to Luis Fonseca’s friend Miguel’s bar to see if he was around and to catch a bite. Luck shone upon me and he was there and warmly greeted me. He made me a nice sandwich and served me a cup of phenomenal coffee. Miguel is truly a nice fellow with many opinions on the subject of the Portuguese Pointer. Although he only has one breeding pair he sure is passionate about these dogs!

 

After leaving the bar I headed into Figueira de Foz to stay at the place I stayed last time. As fate would have it, in this sleepy little summer vacation town, there were no rooms available due to an Herbalife convention. Luckily, the hotel staff at the Hotel Costa de Prata secured a room for me in the neighboring town of Buarcos.

 

 

 

Day 2

 

As most of the kennel owners were unavailable I thought I give the people over at Casal de Palmeiro a call and see if I can see them on Sunday instead of Monday morning. I did not have the address for the kennel as the contact person failed to relay the address to me in an email before leaving. All I knew is that it was somewhere near Porto but it is hard to justify traveling a couple hours without knowing where you are going in a country where you don’t speak the language. The cellphone number for the contact person was not functioning or I failed to dial it correctly as I could not connect. I had a hotel staff person and the owner of a cybercafe both try calling and they could not get through either. As a last ditch effort, I went to this cybercafe a few times on Sunday to see if I could reach the contact person via email but to no avail (finding this cybercafe was an adventure unto itself). It looked like I was not going to Casal de Palmeiro and effectively wasted most of the day trying. I was greatly disappointed at not being able to see the dogs of Casal de Palmeiro.

 

 

That evening I decided to go to that fish restaurant that Mr. Luis Fonseca brought me to the first night of my last trip. The name of the place is Teimoso and it is in the town of Buarcos next to Figueira de Foz. The name means “stubborn”. That is kind of a funny name for a restaurant but the fish is exceptional. I recommend the fish called Robalho which is a member of the bass family. You will not be disappointed. After dinner I headed back to the Hotel Coste de Prata to spend the night as I had a big day ahead of me tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

Day 3 (Click here to see all of day 3's pictures)

Because I was not going to Casal de Palmeiro, I arranged to show up at the kennel of Professor Moises much earlier in the day Monday and proceeded to travel to Seia from Figueira de Foz at about 10 am. I arrived after 1 ½ hours of driving and arrived to find a most hospitable and friendly family waiting for me. The professor actually gave me a hug all the while saying mon ami (my friend in French). You cannot find nicer people than the Mibafes and Professor Moises has pretty much committed his life to the betterment of this breed. Some would say were it not for Professor Moises involvement 50 years ago, the Portuguese Pointer may have slipped into obscurity. It is for that reason and for his wealth of experience and lifelong commitment to the breed that I decided that my first dog to be brought back from Portugal would be from his kennel. In fact this whole trip was mostly made to bring back a female that the Professor had promised me.

 

The professor took me to the cage that had the puppies. Those PP puppies could not be cuter! There were 7 of them: 4 females and 3 males. He isolated the females so that I could get a look at them. 2 stood out from the rest in terms of temperament and looks so he put the other 2 away. I knew I had my work set out for me to decide between these 2 pups. We kenneled the 2 females and went inside to eat lunch.

 

 

Mrs. Costa served a wonderful lunch consisting of a soup made from pumpkin and a cream of chicken dish made with fresh mushrooms. That Mrs. Costa sure can cook! They insisted that I stay with them even though I wanted to secure a room in town. I had the entire 2^nd floor of their beautifully furnished house to myself. I must mention Fernanda which is the Mibafe’s daughter-in-law. She helped coordinate the trip and acted as translator as her French is excellent. She makes a mean Brazilian barbequed beef supper as well!

 

After lunch the Professor asked me what I wanted to do and naturally I suggested taking the dogs into the mountains to work them. We took a 5 month old puppy as well as the parents of the litter from which I was to choose a female. Kaja and Sky are the names of the parents and they both showed a great eagerness to hunt. It was an extremely windy and overcast day up in the mountains but it was still fun to work them. Sadly I was told that the day before was absolutely perfect in terms of weather conditions. Luck was not with me this trip it seems.

 

After returning, we took a quick trip to run an errand. Professor Moises owns a small farm which has some olive trees on it. He had the olives gathered and taken to an extrusion company. Being inside of that building with the machines pressing those olives into oil was like swimming in olive oil. I happen to like olive oil so it was a neat experience for me.

 

Upon returning I played with the puppies some more and made my decision. I had the hardest time deciding as I liked both dogs so much. Ultimately I decided by choosing the larger female as the other was the runt of the litter and was pushed around by the other pups. I have a soft spot for the underdog (excuse the pun) as she showed such energy and a remarkable personality. Alas, sometimes sentimentality must be pushed aside when considering the best female for breeding purposes.

 

We went inside where another banquet awaited us. And to think I was wondering where those extra 5 pound came from… We had a lovely meal and I got to eat dinner with the entire family including the Costa’s 2 grandchildren. After dinner we handled the requisite documents and signatures and then played with the grandkids till bedtime.

 

 

Day 4

 

 

I was awakened at 7:30 as I needed to be at the airport by noon. Canil de Mibafe is an easy 3 1/2 hours away from Lisbon airport so I needed to be on the road by 8:30.  It was raining and there was traffic on the road so after eating breakfast we loaded Rainha de Mibafe (which means Queen from Mibafe)(We call her Nina) into a cardboard carrier that we constructed the night before and I took off. There was something sad about leaving and knowing that she would be so far from her homeland.

 

About halfway to Lisbon I pulled over at a service station to let the puppy out of the box to relieve herself. I quickly turned to get something out of the car and forgot I left the car door open and hit myself so hard just over my eye that I almost knocked myself out. The cut was deep enough to warrant a few stitches. Given the circumstances that would have been impossible so I went into the store of the service station and bought ice cream sticks to plaster to my eye. The bleeding did not stop for 3 hours. I was a site for sore eyes to see (pun). – driving a standard shift car in the pouring rain, with a puppy inside of a box on the seat and an ice cream covering one eye. I would have hated to hear the verbiage on the traffic ticket… For a good week after I had a complete round the eye shiner to remind me not to walk into open car doors.

 

I finally made it to the airport where the limo crew was waiting to pick up the car. After a quick look-over I was in the airport and put the puppy in the top part of a rolling cart. I had brought over a carrier that was designed to fit under the seat in front of me on the plane. Unfortunately, I misjudged how large she was and found it would be impossible for her to ride in that carrier. The Air France crew was kind enough to watch Nina while I took a taxi to a nearby shopping mall and bought a larger dog carrier. I felt she was too young to travel below in the cargo compartment but this crate no longer fit under the seat in front of me. As luck would have it, the first leg of the flight (Lisbon-Paris) was not full so I just used a seat next to me. The Paris to JFK leg I was not so lucky. The flight was jammed packed but miraculously the seat next to me was empty. Thank you Air France crew! I knew they made that happen for me as it was the only seat available on the plane and they fell head over heels in love with her while I was fetching the dog crate. We arrived without incident in New York where my girlfriend Stacey was waiting to pick us up. We still had to drive an hour and a half home (in the rain again) and this officially concluded the longest day in this little puppy’s life.

 

 

I want to thank all that helped to make this arduous trip possible and a special thanks for the hospitality and general goodness of the Mibafe clan. It is a rare find to find people like you these days. Nina is turning out to be quite an intelligent and spunky little girl and gets along fabulously with my boy Jake. They both have great personalities and show a keen intelligence. Nina’s parents are field trained every single day rain or shine. I can’t wait to see what she is capable of in the field and what their offspring will be capable of in the near future.

The End