Collecting the Tibetan Mastiff!
I love beautiful pictures of dogs, no matter what breed it is. When I was a small girl I always borrowed the old and ragged dogbreed atlas from the school's library and spent hours flipping through it together with my sister, picking out breeds we were going to have when we grew up. This was not a habit that died during the following years. Time flew by but I still flipped through new versions with updated pictures of different breeds together with friends, always searching for my future dog. I still do, even though I've already found my future dog ;)
I am not sure why I am so in love with books and postcards showing dogs. I just love how you can follow the breed and see how it's changed from the earilest pictures to the modern ones.
I have collected postcards and books for many years now. It's never been about owning as many as possible, it's always been about the pictures. I can't get enough!
Maybe you've noticed how my love for dogs on photos found a new channel when I bought my camera (poor Zodd, I'm always stalking him). Now I can hardly walk past an interesting dog without asking the owner if I may take a pic. If you are curious about my pictures (not only Tibetan Mastiff) you can visit my deviantART gallery.
Knowing this, it's not hard to understand why I started looking for books and postcards showing the TM.
After sharing my life with my crossbreed Rocky for 10 years, not even knowing the names of his parents or which one was the bernese mountaindog and which one was the GSD x lab cross I now absorb every little detail about Zodd, his relatives and his history. It's amazing to cross continents just by opening a book, travel over the plains of Tibet while being curled up in your favorite chair, see the mythical dogs perform their duty with their deep voices far far away and know that you have a piece of all that sleeping on the floor beside your bed.
Maybe some day in the future I will be able to see where it all began with my very own eyes, but until then I will gladly sit back with my feet up, a book in my lap and my very own piece of history/myth/legend beside me.
//Sanna