Puppies learning to swim

This is a beautiful example of how puppies should be introduced to water

7 week old puppies

Not every breeder is lucky enough to have streams,rivers or lakes on their doorstep, and you cannot take young puppies to popular areas where they will meet other alien dogs.

But this video shows the ideal way and its a pleasure to watch, I have to admit that seeing waterdog puppies in swimming pools with life jackets ( because its deep water)  just doesn't appeal in comparison to a natural approach.

Barbet Puppies in the UK at long last.

It doesn't seem that long ago that I went as a friend with Annette to pick up her Canadian barbet from France.
We had such a lot of laughs over a mad 48 hours and Ebene was a darling from the start, she travelled without a problem and like both my girls accepted the transition of owners so well.
Yesterday she gave birth to 6 pups, as you all know the father is Ooli (Novaforesta Dudley). A fantastic day for the UK barbet as we have had a far too long a gap with no puppy photos and chat.
Have I mentioned that 2 of the pups are particolours, this is a first for the UK, so it adds another dimension to watching these pups grow. In another 2 weeks, more puppy news as Bonnie is growing larger every day, will she beat Bepops record of 12 pups.

Health tests for the barbet online

This is a start, not all are online but I am working on it

http://services.thekennelclub.org.uk/a7230035efe349eb8f3ef894bc6e6d66.healthtest

Betsy is recovering.

Poor Betsy was attacked yesterday by a terrier type dog.
The attack was totally unprovoked, Betsy,Bepop and Bob were on leads and the dog appeared suddenly and attacked without a warning, it just launched itself at Betsys face and refused to let go. Thank goodness for her hairy face, as this dog meant business.
To make matters worse, the owner who had been walking her dog whilst driving her car!!!!!!! was screaming ''kick him'' which worked in the end, although once removed from Betsy, he then attacked Bob.
 Bepop had the sense to slip her collar and so she removed herself from the scene.

Sadly it will have affected Betsy, so we will make sure that she meets lots of nice small dogs. Bobby on his walk today, was slightly more reserved than normal with other dogs, but as he has a brain the size of a pea, he will be back to normal soon. Bepop was definately scared when dogs appeared suddenly today as she came back to my side,so she will also need to meet some nice dogs. So yesterday was a rough day for the dogs, but they will get over it and hopefully forget it, something that my poodle has never ever been able to do, he has never forgotten which dogs have attacked him in the past. Poodles bear grudges, lets hope barbets don't.

Happy Birthday Bepop-her rather enjoyable Birthday in photos

A patch of sunlight

A muddy puddle

breakdancing on horse poo

breakdancing on fox poo in the undergrowth, she thought I hadn't noticed!

A deliberate face the other way after the fox poo incident

It was her birthday, so she was hoping to take this home.

 

Waiting for a walk.

We had a NO dogs in the lounge rule! but they don't feel guilt do they?.
They were keeping tabs on Julian in case he had forgotten their forest walk luckily it was only a 10 minute delay as he filled our vw with oil.

inbreeding coefficient

Firstly an apology as my blog is still getting so many hits a day and I have been just too stretched for time to update.
I spent two days at Crufts, and was lucky enough to spend time with the experts from the Animal Health Trust talking about conserving a rare breed. Basically if you are conserving a breed or any type of animal then you make sure that you always as near as possible to 0% for the coefficency of breeding.
To try and explain, this was written by John Armstrong of the canine diversity project.

Percent Contribution

If sufficient data is available, one way of determining the significance of an ancestor is to calculate his percent contribution to the current dogs. The % contribution (aka percentage of blood) is determined by the way genes are passed from the parents to the progeny. An individual inherits one set of chromosomes, and the genes they carry, from his or her sire and a second, homologous (equivalent) set from the dam. Thus, each parent makes a 50% contribution. As the parents in any generation always contribute 50% of their genes to their progeny, it seems reasonable to expect that 25% will come from each grandparent, 12.5% from each great-grandparent, and so on. However, once we are past the parents, we are dealing in probabilities, not certainties. This is not like mixing paint! When dad passes you one set of his chromosomes, they will include a selection of ones inherited from both his parents, but there is no guarantee that the selection will be exactly equal. There is even a small chance (very small) that he will pass on those from only one of his parents.

By the time we get back 10 generations, the contribution from each of the 1024 ancestors would, in theory, amount to slightly less than 0.1%. However, in the pedigree of the average purebred dog, there are seldom more than 100-200 different names and some appear 50 times or more. These are the significant ancestors that make the major genetic contributions.

So 0% for conserving a breed, almost impossible with a genepool so small for the barbet. However it is worth thinking about if you are buying a puppy, ask for the inbreeding coefficient.

However this is only one of many things to check before you think about buying a pup, but its something to be aware of. If it were foolproof for genetic problems/epilepsy/hip problems and all the current diseases that dogs suffer from then vets would never see dogs such as first crosses (F1) in their surgeries and sadly they do. I have owned three complete crossbreeds, one died at 4 years old of cancer, one died at 7 from a heart attack, the love of my life died at 10 years old of liver cancer, they were all the result of 0% inbreeding. My two pedigree dogs, one a standard poodle who is very much alive at 11 (12 years old next month) and I owned a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel who died at 10 years of old age.

So if buying a pedigree dog, ask the question and write down the result, confirm also over how many generations the % was calculated.As a guide, The Swedish Barbet Club has issued guidelines over registration for their club members, and that is less than 9% over 5 generations.At the moment the next two litters expected in the UK very very soon, so I am very excited are under 9% over 6 generations. 

Its important that breeders in the UK are open and honest and the information about the dogs freely available. If Barbet puppies are advertised on free puppy sites, then please check health reports are available from the breeder, and do check the source of the barbets, remember I am the owner of a fake barbet, bought from gumtree several years ago. A good quality barbet with good health reports and all the paperwork will not be found by surfing for puppies. The breed is still in its foundation stage in the UK, these things take time,but with our record of hip scores (available on the GB site) we are heading in the right direction. It was a good moment for me when I took a rehome boy into my vet with a lump in his ear, I thought it was hair but it was going to be a two man job as no way was he going to sit still, and at the back of my mind, maybe it was a growth or something similar. My vet had a look, and asked me to book him in for a general so he could deal with it, well....I don't like generals on dogs and a vet is a vet, they should have a better look before they decide to risk a dog with a general, so I made my feelings known   politely and scared the vet BUT he looked at my records again and said '' of course these are your barbets, let me get the forceps and see what is down there, most breeds I would not dare to do this but your barbets are always beautifully behaved'' so he disappeared and  returned with forceps that almost made me vomit as they were huge!, this beautiful boy sat there and had a hairball removed from his ear that I should have taken a photo off, it was rock hard and must have been uncomfortable and he didn't make a sound. So the barbet reputation at my vets is still 100%. Apologies as I have digressed as I was thinking about the charactor of the breed, so the above piece was my thoughts. 

Betsy Bonheur

A waterdog or what?


http://youtu.be/uOdeNCclZmA


Betsy who has never shown an interest in retrieving game on land, however put the game in water and BINGO.

At the end of the clip, she gives Bepop a quick kiss and sneaks off to play in the middle of the lake, she thought I wasn't watching!

Whoops a belated Happy Birthday

Betsy x Boree puppies were 4 years old on the 4th March so a big Happy belated Birthday.  

Barbet information

I have just added a couple of new links, one is the pointing dog blog and the other is a site called the French waterdog site which has lots of interesting articles and is being updated frequently with litters being born overseas, and also a  list of stud dogs with a COI of breeding and heights and weights.
Please note that the COI of breeding listed for the stud dogs is from an unknown source and does not correspond to the public database available to all. As with most things in the barbet world, this will lead to confusion,as an unknown source means it cannot be verified officially.

Its very sad to see the links on the French Waterdog site do not include the GB Barbet Club or my Novaforesta site, but the world of dog politics is as I have grown to learn fairly quickly is based around 'people' and not about dogs and the Polish man who runs the site dislikes me or should I say has only ever sent me rather unpleasant emails. I don't bear grudges, so as he is doing stirling work for the breed I am very happy to share the link.
 I try to stay out of the 'barbet politics', but just sometimes you feel the need to say something as I do have opinions on certain issues. Luckily my sweet Bepop and Betsy don't care, they are  lying on the sofa  both snoring. So folks for me the barbet world is about barbets regardless of who is friends with who and sites I link to will only contain information as if 'mud slinging ' occurs then those sites are just not worth reading.  

Ticks and dogs

Every night this week I have taken ticks off my dogs.Yesterday Bepop had these two on her head, both at different stages, one fully engorged and one thinking about filling its stomach. I use tick tweezers (made in Germany) and probably about 30 years old, i am not squeamish about ticks anymore as I have removed so many since moving to the New Forest.
The sad news this week is that a barbet in the States lost its life to Lymes disease and this disease is carried by ticks. Our thoughts again with the family of Dyna at this difficult time.
I don't frontline or use any deterrent on my dogs against ticks, I did awhile back but as I was removing the ticks on a regular basis very much alive, I became more unhappy over the chemicals I was using for no real reason. Frontline will kill a tick in 24/48 hours, so for those reading this horrified that I do not protect my dogs against a terrible death I suggest you do research and find out when Lymes disease is transferred from tick to dog.I live in an area that has Lymes disease.
I hope my dogs have antibodies against Lymes as at some point they must have been bitten by an affected tick.
Have the antibodies given them immunity? or do my dogs have a good immune system?or is it a matter of time?  its hard to find out facts for ticks and Lymes.
When the weather gets warmer, my 2 ticks a night average will rise to 5 or 6 a night, I will then use a herbal spray or an oil to try and stop the blighters attaching to the coat.
Anyway I will try and do more research.........the answers will be there somewhere.
The beautiful barbet in the States had been frontlined and vaccinated against Lymes, but the belief is that she was affected before the vaccination. So don't stop what you do to fight ticks, my belief  maybe very wrong  and the price you pay is the loss of your dog.,