Stenmark Basset Hound

A Comprehensive Guide to Owning and Caring for Your Dog
1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59378-896-4
Verlag: CompanionHouse Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 158 Seiten

Reihe: Comprehensive Owner's Guide

This Comprehensive Owner's Guide to the Basset Hound serves as a complete introduction to the noble and adorable hound dog recognized around the world for his long pendulous ears, his short powerful legs, his elongated body, and that sweet and somehow sad expression. France's most famous scenthound, the Basset Hound wins fans for his easygoing personality, demanding very little of his owners, while providing affectionate companionship, his silly daily antics, and a booming sonorous bark to protect his home and loved ones. Written by hound judge, Betty Ann Stenmark, this volume begins with an informative chapter on the breed's beginnings in France in the Middle Ages, tracing the its development in England and America. The author continues with chapters on characteristics and the breed standard encapsulating all of the virtues of the noble Basset Hound, offering sound advice about which owners are best suited to the breed.New owners will welcome the well-prepared chapter on finding a breeder and selecting a health, sound puppy. Chapters on puppy-proofing the home and yard, purchasing the right supplies for the puppy as well as house-training, feeding, and grooming are illustrated with handsome adults and puppies bursting with attitude and personality! In all, there are over 135 photographs in this compact, useful, and reliable volume. The author's advice on obedience training will help readers better mold and train their dogs into the most socialized, well-mannered dog in the neighborhood. The extensive chapter on healthcare provides up-to-date detailed information on selecting a qualified veterinarian, vaccinations, parasites, infectious diseases, and more. Sidebars throughout the text offer helpful hints, covering topics as diverse as vaccines, toxic plants, first aid, crate training, carsickness, fussy eaters, and more. Fully indexed.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Stenmark, Betty A.

Leseproben

Mr. George R. Krehl’s Basset Hounds, Jupiter, Fino de Paris and Pallas, as they appeared in Cassell’s Illustrated Book of the Dog, published in 1881.

The origin of the Basset Hound, like most other hound breeds, cannot be positively traced; it certainly appears buried in antiquity. Figures found on the monument of Thothmus III, who reigned in Egypt more than 4,000 years ago, are of dogs of long, low stature, the same proportions we see in the Basset Hound of today.

Similar figures were also found in early Assyrian dog sculptures. Dogs of similar Basset type but differing coat textures, one smooth, the other rough, were sent from Assyria to the Rhone district of western France between 125 and 200 AD. Writers describing these dogs told of their use as tracking and trailing traditional Basset game, the rabbit and the hare.

Onomasticon, a Greek dictionary in ten volumes, written by Iulius Pollux in the second century AD, mentions the dog being used by man for hunting purposes about 1300 BC. The ancient Greek author Xenophon made references in his writings of about 450 BC to small hounds used to hunt the hare on foot.

Early man hunted animals for survival itself, but down through the centuries hunting evolved from a means to sustain life into a sport. The landed gentry and nobility of France, as early as the 14th century, pursued blood sports as a social activity, using horses and large and small hounds, along with small terriers, in pursuit of deer, fox, badger and hare.

Zero, owned by HRH The Prince of Wales in the 1930s.

Selection for desired physical characteristics and mental traits to suit a purpose is how the various pure breeds came into being. In prehistoric times, the breeder was the caveman looking for a dog whose basic instincts were strong, and he used the best of these dogs to assist him in finding and catching food. Later, the breeder was the farmer, who found that keeping a game, hardy dog around helped keep meat on the family’s table. The advantage to the common man was that the Basset was slower and could be easily followed on foot.

Later still, when the Basset was kept by the aristocracy, stockmen were employed and it was they who made the selection of stock. Having the wealth to do so, the aristocracy kept large numbers of hounds together in packs. The terrain varied from district to district throughout France and so the desired type varied from pack to pack to best serve the challenges of the local hunt. This group of wealthy sportsmen usually followed the hounds on horseback.

Down through the ages, the breeder, whether he be the caveman, the farmer or the stockman, fixed type by repeatedly selecting for those desirable characteristics and traits known to suit the purpose at hand, and the long, low hounds eventually were refined and bred with some consistency.

During the Middle Ages in France, there were many varieties of hound described in early writings. How each of these influenced the present-day Basset Hound is not clear. In the eighth century, the “Dog of Flanders” was called the St. Hubert Hound; St. Hubert was the patron saint of the monks at an abbey in the Ardennes. There were two varieties: a black-and-tan dog used for hunting boar and wolf, and a white variety later known as the Talbot Hound, a dog said to be 28 inches high.

The modern Basset Hound represents generations of selective breeding for desired characteristics, all of which are abundantly evident in Eng. Ch. Coombeglen Rufus.

Sir Thomas Cockraine in 1591 recommended that a dog known only as the “heavy Southern-type hound” in southern France be bred with a Kibble Hound, the latter described as being of the broken and crook-legged Basset type.

Le Couteulx believed that all French hounds were derived from the St. Hubert Hound. He describes 12 different varieties of Basset said to exist around the time of the French Revolution (1789–1799). He felt that they were all related, having similarly shaped heads, long ears and dewlap. In another work, dated 1879, there is mention of the Rostaing Bassets with long bodies and short crooked legs that were owned by a French marquis. This type of dog was described as having a grand Otterhound-type head with a rough coat and was probably of the type we know today as the basset griffon (such as the Griffon Nivernais, the Grand Basset Griffon Vendéen and the Griffon Fauve de Bretagne).

Sir John Everett Millais, one of the earliest English breeders, theorized that the rickety-type Bloodhounds, descendants of the St. Hubert Hound, could have developed short, crooked legs. He believed that sportsmen who followed their hounds on foot selected specimens with the shortest legs, and the Basset Hound was the result of their continued selections.

ACHONDROPLASTIC

You have read that the French word basset means “low-set” or “dwarf” but did you realize that today the Basset is known as an achondroplastic type of dog? Achondroplasia refers to a form of dwarfism primarily affecting the development of long bones, i.e., the limbs of young dogs. Growth in some areas is restricted or arrested, resulting in an animal normal in head and body development, but severely foreshortened in the limbs. The stunted bones, although lacking in length and frequently bowed, are strong, often stronger than those of normal legs. Dachshunds and Basset Hounds are typical achondroplastics. The rather short and anatomically deformed limbs, due to achondroplasia, equip the Basset specifically to enter rabbit warrens, badger lairs, etc., a task quite beyond hounds with “normal” leg formation.

CANIS

Dogs and wolves are members of the genus Canis. Wolves are known scientifically as Canis lupus while dogs are known as Canis domesticus. Dogs and wolves are known to interbreed. The term canine derives from the Latin-derived word Canis. The term dog has no scientific basis but has been used for thousands of years. The origin of the word dog has never been definitively ascertained.

This early drawing of French Bassets as they appeared in 1885 represents the two coat types, rough and smooth, which have been popular on the Continent for many years.

In 1887, the prolific English writer, Stonehenge, wrote, “In France, about twelve different breeds of hounds are met with, including the St. Hubert, the smooth hounds of La Vendée, the Brittany Red Hound, the gray St. Louis, the Gascony, the Normandy, the Saintogne, the Poitou, the Breese, the Vendée rough-coated hound, the Artois, and the little Basset, coupled with the Briquet. Of these, the grey St. Louis is almost extinct, and all the others, with the exception of the Basset, may be grouped with the St. Hubert and the Red Hound of Brittany.” He goes on to say, “The varieties of the Basset are innumerable, some being black-and-tan, and common throughout the Black Forest and Vosges, while the others are either tricoloured or blue mottled. The tricolour has lately been introduced into England in large numbers, having been first shown to the English visitors at the French show of 1863.”

Basset Hounds, when in proper physical condition, can leap hurdles and hold their own in agility trials. This action photo originally appeared in Sport & General.

Stonehenge uses the words of the earliest French authority, De Fouilloux, to describe the “Basset d’Artois,” with which we are chiefly concerned. “The Artesien, with full-crooked fore-legs, smooth coats, brave, and having double rows of teeth like wolves.”

Stonehenge further observed, “In the many political storms that have swept over France, carrying away her monarchical pageantry and the impressing ceremonies of the chase, many of that country’s ancient breeds became almost extinct. Among them, the basset-hound fared a little better than its blood neighbours—the hounds of Artois, Normandy, Gascony and Saintogne. Thanks to the sporting and patriotic instincts of the descendant of the old noblesse, Count le Couteulx de Canteleu, who spared neither trouble nor expense in his purpose, the smooth tricolour basset-hound of Artois has been preserved in all its purity. The breed was not revived; it had never died out, but it was necessary to search all over the ‘basset’ districts to find, in sportsmen’s kennels, the few true typical specimens, and to breed from them alone. In these efforts on behalf of the old breeds, he was greatly benefited by the valuable assistance of M. Pierre Pichot, editor of the Revue Britannique. These are inseparably connected with the famous kennel of Chateau St. Martin, and hounds of Count Couteulx’s strain are now as highly prized and eagerly sought for in England as in France. They are aptly described by the French writer De la Blanchere as ‘large hounds on short legs’.”

PHYSICAL AND MENTAL

Since dogs have been inbred for centuries, their physical and mental characteristics are constantly being changed to suit man’s desires for hunting, retrieving, scenting, guarding and warming their masters’ laps. During the past 150 years, dogs have been judged according to physical characteristics as well as functional abilities. Few breeds can boast a genuine balance between physique, working ability and temperament.

In Vero Shaw’s 1881 The Book of the Dog, another of the earliest English Basset fanciers wrote, “The Basset par excellence, though, is the beautiful smooth-coated tricolour of Artois, and this is the type with its rich and brilliant colouring of black, white, and golden tan, its noble Bloodhound-like...