The Weimaraners
"'And dogs.' Drake grinned. 'Sit, girls.' Three silver gray doggie bottoms hit the gravel with a crunch. 'Troy, meet Anna, Sophie and Marie, our wonderfully wicked Weimaraners, a present from our dear friend Ludwig von Müffert.'"
Weimaraners are hunting dogs. Today they are "fur and feather" dogs, yet in the early nineteenth century they were still used to hunt bears and deer -- as Troy will find out when Anna, Sophie and Marie descend upon his home.
Not much is known about the origin of this breed of hunting dogs, though. In his 1631 portrait of Prince Rupert von der Pfalz the famous Dutch painter van Dyck also included a dog similar to our Weimaraners today. It is believed that for several centuries Weimaraners have been used for hunting throughout Europe, when under the Electoral Prince of Sachsen-Weimar an extensive breeding programme was started at the end of the eighteenth century. This is usually taken as the origin of the name "Weimaraner."
