Backyard Breeding

A very long time ago, we had a Brittany/Poodle cross who actually looked quite a bit like a Springer, though her ears were too short. She was never a gun dog but she was a lovely creature who helped Tom Daane with his paper route. She was also promiscuous and produced litters of strange looking multiple-sired pups with the ease of a Jack Nicklaus tap-in putt. She taught me about raising puppies and made it seem simple. But it is not.

The Modern Era dawned with Samantha the Setter, who turned out much better than we had hoped (she was the only dog I have ever owned who snorted at me in disgust if I missed a shot). So we bred her to Harry Petersons’ Sam, a very accomplished, if somewhat ill-mannered, grouse dog.

It was mid-December back in that dreadful era in pop music when dogs barked Christmas Carols on every AM radio station. “Chain him up,” commanded Harry when he dropped Sam at our house. So I did, inside the chain link dog run where I hoped Samantha’s assignation would occur. Sam climbed the fence. Fortunately his chain was just long enough so that his hind legs could reach the ground on the other side, so he didn’t quite hang himself. But he must have felt like doing so because Samantha would have none of him and he morosely sat at the end of his chain (well away from the fence) and barked Jingle Bells: “Woof-woof-woof, woof-woof, woof, woof-WOOF-woof- woof-woof . . .” Day and night for three days. The neighbors were getting a bit grumbly. But then Samantha had a change of heart (or another organ) and Sam’s ardor was finally requited. Peace and tranquility returned to our neighborhood and Sam went home to his.

There were ten pups plus a stillborn. One pup was deaf (it takes a while to find this out). The others were all healthy. We kept Jack who turned out to be my best-ever dog, probably. Harry took a female he named Gert, who won two national grouse trial championships in partnership with Al Stuart’s Bandit. So Harry and Al bred Gert and Bandit to produce, among others, Uncle Jack’s Razzmataz (Razz), Mark Daane’s late long-time stalwart.

For lots of reasons, it is easier for a backyard breeder to own the sire than the dam. Basically you just leave everything to the dam’s owner and collect your pick of the litter in due time. When Jack was getting on, we decided it would be too bad if he died without any progeny so we bred him to Larry Kanitz’s bitch. Larry lived in Brooklyn, Michigan and worked the night shift at the Dearborn Ford Plant. On alternate days, he would pick up Jack in the morning in Ann Arbor on his way home and drop him in the evening on his way to work. The first time Larry stopped at our house in his black pick-up truck, Jack dutifully climbed aboard because I told him to. The second time he could hardly wait. In fact, he spent days watching wistfully for any traffic passing our house and became visibly agitated at the passage of any pickup truck, especially a black one. He looked like he needed some old Sinatra records during his daily vigils.

We did not keep one of Jack’s get, nor one of Night Train’s either; the timing was wrong. But eventually we bred Harley to Mark’s dog Jake and we kept Albert. It wasn’t easy. Harley gave birth on July 5, 1996. The first pup was born dead, the second was Albert. And then the contractions stopped. After a time we went to the emergency clinic (4 th of July weekend is not the best time to have an emergency), where they did a C-section. Pete survived on July 6 but his three litter-mates did not. And Harley damned near died trying. So we spayed her, and eventually Albert too. Yes, Albert is a girl, and a fine one, named after our Denver daughter, Alison (fat Albert to her mean childhood sibs), who had the bad luck to be visiting during all of this and nursed little Albert the puppy with a tiny formula bottle during Harley’s all night travail at the clinic.

This is an incomplete family history but it encompasses over 30 years of canine ups and downs and there is a moral to the tale: even though we had some successes, it is best to leave the breeding to the breeders. As for me, my next dog will be a “started” one-year old (or older) from an established breeder or handler — there’s this dog named Rebel we met last winter in Georgia… RWOL

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