Natural History

Source.

This is the English version of a classic Hungarian cartoon, which is known as Vuk in Hungarian. The story come from a novel by István Fekete, who was known for his animal novels.

In the English version, one of the characters in the cartoon is a dog named Barney. He is called a “foxhound” in this version of the film. I think he is more likely a Vizsla. Look at him when he appears in the cartoon. He’s a reddish dog with floppy ears and a docked tail. And this is a Hungarian cartoon. It was made when Hungary was a Communist country, and access to Western dog breeds was limited. The Vizsla, which comes in wire-haired and smooth-haired forms, would have been a common dog that rural people in Hungary would have kept.

Also in this version, Barney tries to cover up his inability to catch Vuk (or any other fox) by claiming that the dog who did so poorly at foxhunting was a “German shepherd.”  My guess is that in the Hungarian version, Barney was actually saying that it was a German HPR of some sort that had a hard time catching the fox. It would be logical to mistake a German HPR with a Vizsla.

I think it is very likely that Barney is a Vizsla. Vizslas can be used to hunt foxes. However, in this country, they are far more likely to be used as bird dogs. I suppose it would be hard to explain to a North American audience that a bird dog would make a good foxhound. It is also likely that Vizslas weren’t that common in the West when this film came out.  (This English version came out in 1987.)

Keep in mind that this film shows farms and forests. In Communist Hungary, 95 percent of the farmland was held in state-owned farming collectives. The forests were also similarly nationalized. However, it also means that much of the land that can be cultivated is used for producing crops, which is why you see the foxes trying to hide in a wheat field. There is not much of an environmental message in the film. After all,  state policy in these countries was not conducive to Green politics of any sort.