kelpiecuddles

I like the way our dogs look here and I do feel that it's possible to breed to standard and still have working ability, there are bassets in Aus that show or come from strong show lines who also track, they are here but it's a small population so there aren't lots around

And to be honest apart from a bit more leg length the body type of my current basset isn't that dissimiliar from that one, show breeders tend to favour more wrinkles, etc but I specifically looked for a dog with less loose skin when I got Josie, that dog still has the prosternum, the front legs which are placed at the deepest part of the chest and come inwards with slightly pointed out front feet to support the heaviest part of their chest and from the pic it looks like the hindquarters nicely balance th front in terms of width. Would it wins shows, hell no, but it's got a reasonable body shape so it's breeders obviously use their dogs in the field and breed for what they like while still maintaining fitness. If you aren't breeding to standard because you aren't showing them obviously something like whether the dog is too tall to be shown won't factor in their breeding choices. ETA: Obviously it's head isn't close to what we see in show bassets but once again, if you aren't breeding for show then you wouldn't care about it if it doesn't affect working ability

No probably not, but the standard is still a fit for purpose standard, the differences come out of breeders preferences and perceptions of that standard. I certainly know my current basst has the fitness to go all day if I ask it of her so I have no concerns that the dogs with the necessary fitness can be got from the current stocks in this country. If you look at something like a herding breed you will get people who breed only for work and their dogs may look nothing like a show dog, you get people who breed only for show and you gt cross over people who's dogs excel in both areas.

We are planning to train dogs for man-trailing work for search and rescue in bushland, it's hard work that will require my animals to be in top notch condition and able to work all day, a step up from regular tracking. Before anyone asks it's not the same as the current work that SARDA dogs do or the USAR training that Steve Austin put dogs through back in 2012. USAR is not the same as bushland man-trailing, bassets would not be ideally suited to USAR work. And ys I realise it's not the original purpose but it's much the same level of fitness and still utilises the same breed traits that make them such good hunting dogs.

Gosh, I sometimes wish natural selection would take out the parents instead of it being the resultant kids of these people breeding who have to suffer for their idiocy.

Well it means bugger all unless you can identify exactly what is bringing that number down so far. Also how do you select for longer life if you don't know the answer to how long will this dog live? until it's dead, can't breed it at that point LOL If there are lines that are genuinely simply dying of old age related issues that young I'd be wondering whether those lines should just be essentially thrown out, I certainly wouldn't be using them as a source of breeding stock.

Initially training is going to require a lot of travel, we aren't planning to get our first one intended for training for a little while yet once we are settled in our new house, my husband is living at home again and our youngest is at school. We do some fun work with our girl at home but she's already heading for 6 years old and by the time we get her to the standard we're looking at she'd be slowing down a lot. She's fun practice for at home but not suited to what I'm after.

Because she was bought as a pet only although she is on main register from fab bloodlines and although she's a lovely girl and research tells me is a reasonable basset I don't think she'd really compete with the good bassets that are out there. I'm quite willing to say she's nice but she's just not 'all that'

Yes Diva, that is basically what I have found. It's why we will most likely start out training and making a name for ourselves as trainers and handlers and then move upwards from there and hope that we can prove ourselves in that scene. As I said my son wants to show and I've had some generous offers of assistance from showers to assist him to learn to handle their dogs but it's not so much a personal aspiration of mine.

Fair enough, I don't claim to be up with show greys(although I do realise that track racing wasn't their original purpose)

I flew a rescue British Shorthair cat once from Perth to Sydney, when I got to Sydney to collect her there was a Russian blue sitting in a crate. When I said that wasn't my cat they looked in to it and found out that my cat had been sent to Darwin and their cat had been sent to me, the cat was then sent Darwin to Brisbane, Brisbane to Sydney and I slept in my car in the carpark at the freight terminal until the cat arrived at 9am the next morning, total screw up and that poor rescue cat was in a crate for well over 24 hours as a result.

Thankfully ours is a fit for purpose standard, I aspire to have fit for purpose dogs which are bred to standard and may go to trialling homes, pet homes and maybe even a few to show homes.

Maybe it's different in your breed Rebanne, high numbers of animals and plenty of well established breeders who breed for purposes other than showing.

Gosh, she's lucky they weren't aggressive enough to attack her when she opened the gate. I agree that the gates obviously not secure enough if a three year old can open it

I noticed that it seemed to be very much a case of "Your only a good breeder if you showed for a long time first", any other kind of entry to the world of breeding seems very much frowned upon on the basis that you couldn't possibly learn about what makes up a good animal in any other way.

That's a from all causes number isn't it Steve? I would imagine it would include animals that were PTS due to major hip issues, temperament issues(whether due to nature or nurture), poor nutrition for giant breeds, other major health issues and things of that nature as well as simply animals that were severely injured in one way or another. I can't help but wonder whether there are other issues at play here. I remember looking at the stats for bassets and thinking how low it was(8 point something years from recollection), Josie is 5 and very healthy I can't imagine her being anything close to elderly within a couple of years.

haha, love that tongue!

My plans are more towards the working side of my breed, my son is keen to get in to showing but I have other plans for my dogs which are bred to standard truly fit for purpose dogs. Part of the reason I wanted to be able to chronicle our work on our own webpage and maybe a blog so that if we do decide down the track we wish to move in to breeding, our kennel name will be known and will hopefully speak for itself even though we may not have been particularly active in the show scene. Probably not such an issue if you are working with something like a herding breed but a large proportion of the dogs in my breed in Aus are bred for the show scene and are still great as working animals because it's a fit for purpose standard but their breeders aren't usually involved in that side of things so much.

I was growling at the kids the other week for letting the dogs eat the watermelon skins, maybe in future I'll let them :)

Certainly wishing I'd applied a few years ago instead of waiting until I felt I was getting closer to actually using it. Atleast now I can get my prefix, set up my webpage, etc and be able to show what we are doing with our dogs on there and be able to use that same name when we do get to the point of breeding

I have just spoken to DogsNSW and can confirm that the requirement is now that you must own a bitch on main register BEFORE applying for your prefix. I asked about using Josie and even told them that she was neutered and was told I can still use her to attain my prefix. :) So good news for me but hard for anyone who doesn't already own a bitch, now I have to work out which box all her paperwork is in LOL.

I read it as those two individual dogs should be banned not their 'breed'

Info has kind of been split between two threads here but earlier I did explain that I initially wanted it as part of what identified us in our training for working animals, therefore not having to change our name if/when we decided to move in to breeding. As in X dog trained by Y kennels.

Maybe then those dormant prefixes need to be culled from the system, if they were never used to produce a dog under that prefix and the member owning the prefix is no longer an active ANKC member using their prefix in another legitimate way(such as it being part of their identification as a trainer working towards dog sports or whatever) their prefix simply becomes null and is then available to be used by someone or for something very similar to be used.

It could be collected via the council registration system, when you notify the council that your animal is deceased so they can remove it's chip from active records they could also record the cause of death, in this way you would also capture those animals that were sold in to pet homes where the family isn't a member of the ANKC. There could be some sort of check box on the form that identified that animal as registered with the ANKC or another appropriate resistration organisation(I hesitate to say being from an ANKC registered breeder as it would in this case probably be beneficial to include breeds such as the Bosdog that are in the process of moving towards registration) in order to differentiate in the stats to also show whether the age of death differs depending on the source of that animal. Would be a very interesting stat to have I think