Thursday 6 October 2011

Meet Archie the poodle

Sadly the late Archie, but this is a purebred standard poodle and its totally his fault that I ever heard the name 'barbet'.

Archie was  small for a standard poodle, he had zero elegance, a very oily coat, and was certainly one of the cleverest dogs I have ever met. He didn't have poodle eyes, he ran like a spaniel,and his nostrils well they certainly worked well and they were huge,even in remote parts of the forest he always found tennis balls, some that had been rotting for years.Archie was never castrated, he was never bothered by other dogs, his loyalty was always to his owners.In the summer Archie coat became brown, something that never has happened with my black standard poodle even though both had greying coats and both lived in the same area.

It was a dog historian that spotted Archie and made the comment that he was a throwback to a barbet, and after a few days of research I was hooked by this new discovery.
I was involved in buying Archie, so I did meet his Father and Mother, and also his 10 brothers and sisters (I think it was 10 maybe more). He wasn't perfect, no dog is, but he was an amazing charactor.