The message from Gun Dog editor Rick Van Etten was brief: Would I be interested in writing a profile on Drents?

On what?

If you've never heard of Drentsche Patrijshonds -- don't even think about trying to pronounce the name -- no need to get yourself all riled up and lonesome. With something like 75 of them in the U.S., the dogs need all the PR they can get. Luckily for them, they've got Brian O'Connor and John Lambregts working their corner. Between the two of them, they have enough enthusiasm to start their own breed club. Which, not entirely coincidentally, they incorporated in August 2008, and a web page is now up and running.

I wanted a chance to see the dogs work before writing a profile, but Lambregts lives in Idaho Falls, Idaho, a five-hour drive from my home, and O'Connor lives even farther away in New Mexico. What's more, it's not like I could saunter down to the local dog club and rent a Drent for the day. But I was going to Arizona to hunt, and O'Connor was living in the next state over, and if he wanted to jog over for a visit I'd show him a few Mearns quail and get a look at his dogs to boot.

A few weeks later, most of the current American contingent of Drent owners met me in a local coffee shop: Lambregts and his wife, Marsha, and O'Connor and his wife, Nikki.

There were four of the handsome dogs among them: Bowi, Clio, Paxson and little Booker, a drop-dead cute, six-month-old puppy with a tail as long as a broom handle.

Forthwith, we loaded up the whole squirming crew and struck out for the mountains.

Unfortunately for us, the Arizona mountains weren't in a receptive mood. It hadn't rained in weeks, and each step lifted little puffs of talc-like dust, which slowly drifted back down, coating the sere and dead grass around us and turning our boots a light, chalky brown. Worse, there were bird hunters in every coulee, and the coveys I'd hunted for years had been shot to hell and Sunday. Lacking other alternatives, I jabbed my finger more or less at random onto a map.

"We'll hunt here," I said, silently praying the drainage I'd chosen would hold at least a covey or two.

The dogs: Drents look a lot like Small Munsterlanders, another rare breed some of you may not be familiar with.

"Most people confuse them with springers," Marsha Lambregts told me. "You get a lot of strange looks. And nobody knows what a Munsterlander looks like, either."

In fact, they have the Munsterlander's same spaniel-like liver and white markings on the face and back, same long tails, although perhaps a bit stockier and bigger boned. Lambregts, a native of the Netherlands, says that the Munsterlanders just across the border in Germany are indeed closely related, although many of the Dutch claim the dogs originated in Spain.