Becoming JACQUELYNFOGEL Pedigrees, Research, and Building a Line When i got my first basset i relied upon the knowledge and guidance offered by the people from whom my dog was purchas d. it was not a sufficient plan. My first basset was from show stock, but she was sold to me as a pet because her breeders thought she was too refined to be a show dog. they also did not encour- age me to spay her. i didn’t question their assessment, nor did i try to verify its accuracy. When she was 2 years old i began looking around for somebody who would breed to my show-stock bitch, and i found a breeder who lived close to me who looked at her pedigree and decided she was good enough to breed to one of their show dogs. i asked if they wanted a puppy back, but they said no, just a stud fee. My bitch got preg- nant – and i lost all seven puppies because nobody told me i shouldn’t let her whelp them outside in 50 degree weather. i was only 21 and didn’t realize that breeding dogs was not something that just came natu- rally – like my Mom said it would. Mom had never bred a dog, but she was convinced they could do it on their own because dogs had survived in the wild for thousands of years without human intervention. it was a tragedy of errors.
be able to produce an acceptable level of quality when bred to one of her pre-potent stud dogs. i, of course, was greatly offended by her assessment of my bitch –after all, what did she know. she then asked me the best question anyone ever asked – how did i know my dog was nice if i had never com- pared her to the standard, or even any other basset? What equipped me with the knowledge to decide she was beautiful? What research had i done? And the education of Jackie began – 8 years and 3 litters after my first basset purchase. i swal- lowed my false pride and decided to replace it with an educa- tion instead. Now i worry that newcomers to our sport are not willing to put in the time to learn what it has taken senior breeders a lifetime to learn. i worry that, like me, they will get a reason- ably good dog from a reasonably good breeder, hear a rea- sonably good but likely incomplete assessment of their dog, then think they know enough to become top-level breeders themselves. it wasn’t until i had bred bassets for 15 years that i realized my foundation bitch was a much better dog than i thought, and the daughter i kept was a much worse dog than i thought. the only thing i heard about was bone, and that was the only variable i used to select the puppy to keep. obviously there was a lot more to a basset than bone, and all that other stuff didn’t magically show up again every time i bred. Not only did i need to understand what made a good basset (phenotype), i also had to understand what caused those characteristics to become evident (genotype), and i had to figure out which pedigrees had what i was looking for. once i got to that point, my mind had been opened enough to accept the second best advice i ever got which was to go to as many basset specialties as possible, watch everything, identi- fy the “look” i liked best, then identify the kennels that pro- duced that “look” and buy the best dog i could get from one of those kennels/breeders. that advice came 17 years after my first purchase of a purebred, and 5 years after i had finished my first champion. i still had one huge lesson to learn, and it took getting into a second breed to figure it out. Â
After thAt first loss i bred my bitch again because she had been good enough to breed to a champion, and i had done some research about whelping puppies. this time i went to a long-time breeder 125 miles away. she brought out her stud dog, got the two tied, then left me to watch themuntil they untied. there was no con- versation, and she sent me on my way after taking my check for the stud fee and providing a pedigree for her dog. When i
read the pedigree i realized that she had been the breeder of my bitch’s dam, and i had just met the famous Nancy evans. ‘had’ was the key word. i didn’t read the pedigree until i got home. i didn’t even know what i should have asked her, and she made it clear she didn’t want to spend any time talking to a newbie. i hadn’t asked her to evaluate my bitch or help me with puppy evaluation, or help me learn how to show, because i didn’t even know enough to ask those questions. i took my pregnant bitch home and had 5 beautiful puppies, one of which i kept because she had a lot of bone, something her dam lacked. Nevermind that she also had a terrible topline, wide, flat backskull and short flat ears. i “knew” she was beautiful because she came from my show-stock dam, she was bred to a champion, and she had more bone than her mother. i bred the daughter to a local non-showable, poorly bred dog with a lot of bone and produced 6 large, unattractive dogs. fortunately i did not keep any of those puppies. i moved to Wisconsin with my two show-stock bitches, and promptly looked up a local basset breeder. for the first time, i got some real help. she informed me that my bitch was not particularly beautiful, but she did have a pedigree that might
138 • S how S ight M agazine , J uly 2017
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