Another Muddy Grandma

As promised this is 'Grandma Betsy, taking the old French expression ''., Être crotté comme un barbet'' in hand. Did she smell bad? absolutely those who were there will remember well. This was the day of the Barbet Club photo shoot with Nick Ridley and before they were required to pose in front of the camera we thought they should have a run in a field, it was a dry day and we had a DRY field. Anyway a quick dip inbetween posing dogs and she was as good as new, and some of the resulting photos  are being sold as 'stock' photos for the breed so it turned out to be a wonderful day. 

Barbet symposium in France

An important date for the breed is the 4th August in France.
If you are on facebook, there is an events page where questions can be asked:
 https://www.facebook.com/events/224078101012018/
There will also be an opportunity to request headphones for translation as obviously the meeting will be conducted in French.
Currently the barbet in the UK is entwined with France and quite rightly so as the barbet is a French breed..The French Kennel Club is our governing body until the time comes that the Kennel Club will accept the barbet. We hope to have at least 6 or 7 barbet owners attend this meeting with dogs, as far as I know the meeting is focusing on breed standard changes, so all barbets that attend will be measured for height and hopefully weight.One can only hope that commonsense will be used, it would be good for the breed to have an ideal height and weight for males and females but my personal opinion is no max or min height. The barbet is rare and extremely low in numbers worldwide, no dog should be overlooked for breeding over its size. Its all down to the commonsense of the breeder, if you have a tall female then use a smaller male and be selective with the offspring. All the Novaforesta dogs that are being bred this year are smaller than my girls who were both imported from France, so we are heading the right way with the first generation born in the UK. This is my personal view from a working point of view, most breeds working in the field are smaller than  the examples shown in the ring.