wish bloodhounds could do this

I was sent this link by a friend....its so sweet....i wish bloodhounds could do this!!!
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=AUtPKbMwnRo

breed records

Well the BRS arrived today and makes for some VERY interesting reading!!! I certainly worry for the future of some of the hounds.
A conversation with a pet hound owner of many years standing today, revealed some interesting things....such as hearing about 2 hounds with epilepsy from a line i had always considered clear. It certainly means I will be reviewing what I had been planning for my next mating.
On a more positive note, the babies are thriving and eating us out of house and home.
They are starting to play with their toys and tomorrow we are building them a lovely run from our back door, so they can potter safely outside if they want to.
We still have a little girl available, and I cant believe some of the people who have enquired......a woman in a wheel chair living in the city???? A woman with a 9 month old baby????? The worst of it is that there are people out there who would sell them one, and probably will!!!

happy 5 weeks birthday

The babies are 5 weeks old today....I cant believe they are that old already. Mind you I think that sleeping on a camp bed for 5 weeks has aged me 5 years!!!
They are really heavy pups, I have never had such fatties.....in fact too heavy for my scales now!
The warm porridge is now going into their tummies rather than up their noses and in their ears, and mum is finally beginning to get a bit of rest from their constant food demands. In fact last night she was snoring on the sofa for several hours and was non to pleased to be woken up and told to go back into her babies!

4 weeks old

The babies are now 4 weeks...eating proper food and starting to interact with each other and me....mainly by sinking their needle sharp baby teeth into my fingers!

sunny days

After weeks of rain its been nice to have a couple of sunny days. Poor Tennants training has gone a bit awry over the last few weeks as pups have taken precedence. However Andrew volunteered to puppy sit today whilst I went out into our back field and did a bit of training this lovely sunny afternoon. Here he is with his 1st woodcock....you cant imagine what a proud mummy I was!!!

busy days

Well these are really busy days at the moment with people coming to visit their puppies....we have been so lucky to have some really lovely families visit.
Thanks to the folk who emailed/rang yesterday and today to ask why I wasnt at LKA show this week....its just that I feel so strongly that my place is at home looking after a litter and not at a show....to be honest I feel it would be an act of immense selfishness to consider trapsing off to a show, just for the sake of chasing some prize, and risking bringing an infection back to the puppies, who are so vulnerable at this stage. I care about the welfare and health of my puppies too much to do that.

Dinner time!

The babies had their very first meal today......it was a wonderful warm porridge of Royal Canin Baby Dog, Royal Canin milk.....and a spoonful of green tripe for added aroma! They were all very good and resisted wading into it for the 1st 5 minutes......here they are enjoying it!

Back on line

well FINALLY we are back on the internet and no longer am I having to stand halfway up the field trying to get a signal on my mobile phone to send emails!!! I will now try to catch up with everyones picture requests and updating the websites.
The babies are lovel and really growing. Today they had their very first solid food meal...well not really solid, more like a porridge...but they loved it and dived in and managed to get it all over themselves. Logic was delighted and spent hours licking it off them! Heres Candle and Cinnamon photographed at 2 and a half weeks old...and as usual they are asleep!!!

eat-sleep-eat-sleep-eat........grow a bit more....eat...

Well as you can see.....one week- old bloodhounds dont do too much at this stage. Logics getting a bit bored with all the sitting around and like me, she cant wait for their eyes to open and for them to start being a bit more active.

Official Complaint

An official complaint has been lodged by Tennant, because in stead of being mums number one baby...hes now relgated to 9th in line......so wise boy that he is, he worked out that mum shares her time between sitting in with the puppies or watching them on the cctv from another room, so hes decided to sit infront of the screen with a toy in his mouth until he gets some attention!!

Growing

Bloodhound puppies grow at an alarming rate and these guys are no exception.
Theres one boy who is a bit smaller and his thuggish sisters are always pushing him off the milk supply so I decided to top him up a little with Royal Canin puppy milk. He loves it and its really made a difference to his daily weight gain. However when some friends came over yesterday and saw I was busy "messing" with puppies they offered to make us all a coffee.......I thought it tasted a bit odd but said nothing. After they left I realised they had used the jug of RC puppy milk !!!
Its fantastic not to have to work/pick up a camera for a few weeks but I have had so many emails wanting to see pix of the little guys that I had to take a few last night...heres my favourites! As you can see, Logic is taking to motherhood with her usual calm attitude and snored her way through most of the photo shoot!

five days

well they are now 5 days old and growing! Amazingly they all have different personalities and even at this tender age their characters are showing through.....typically the two liver girls are complete gannets and growing twice as fast as the rest......Big bertha one of the B&T girls is a complete thug, and litte "Curate" is spending as much time as he can, crawling up my trouser leg and snoozing there!!
For some reason logic decides at 4am EVERY morning, that she wants to climb onto my camp bed and escape her babies.....so I havent had too much sleep yet, as you will gather should you phone me this week!!
photos to come tomorrow if all goes to plan.

eight

Well Logic had 8 babies in all. Final headcount is 4 boys and 4 girls. Logic is the perfect mother and is feeding them well.
My camp bed next to the whelping box is relativley comfy, and I will be staying there for a few weeks yet.
I will try to get some nice pix of the babies in the week, but for the moment these quick snaps will have to do!

sitting in the whelping box......

im sitting in the whelping box with a laptop!! So far we have 7 babies and Im not sure but there could be just one more lurking!
All ok so far, Logic is a very very proud mother and already has chosen her favourite one!
It was quite a shock to have 2 liver girls in the litter as I wasnt expecting any livers......I am thrilled about it. Photos to follow soon.

light relief

A Bit of light relief from the waiting game today.....a gundog training day photo shoot....and the star of course was our very own tennant!!

still waiting

well we are still waiting!!! Heres a few pix taken by some of our visitors today showing Logic looking all glowing & pregnant !!! plus a nice shot of my lovely Generous

Countdown Begins

Well the countdown to the arrival of our litter of bloodhound puppies has begun. OK I know technically its 10 days away but after the experience of Tarnish having hers a week early last year, I am taking no chances this time! Logic is getting pretty big, despite me telling everyone that she wasnt just a week ago.
Its amazing how much interest this litter is attracting , with calls from friends in Italy, America and Switzerland today, all wanting to know how the mum-to-be is doing. OK must go and paint the whelping room a suitable "nursery" colour!

Thanks Simon!

Thanks Simon for your nice piece in Dog World this week about our recent trip to CZ. Lots of people have been very interested in the trip.

trading commodity

Sometimes I really despair at the people "out there". We had an email last night from someone who had bred a chihuahua, but now their little daughter was bored with it and would like a bloodhound puppy instead.......the mind boggles that a) any on can be that stupid and B) that people can treat dogs like a commodity to be traded when they are bored with it. My reply consisted of just two words....the second one being "off".
over the years we have had some really bizarre folk contact us because they wanted to buy a bloodhound puppy....but this one definitely takes the biscuit!!

Logics travels!

This great picture was sent to me by one of the guys .......thanks Ondřej
Its no wonder the German Police stopped us and thought we had contraband stashed in the Trophies....they are huge!!!

1, 2, 3, 4? How many bloodhound puppies?

Well a positive scan today showed that Logic is in pup and by the looks of it she is expecting a nestful!!
So our plans for the BZH training are on hold now until the new year.
Last night Tennants favourite girlfriend "Zaba" came to play......this was one of the few moments when they actually sat still!!

let sleeping pigs lie

well Logics training for her BZH hunting test is going quite well....I even managed to locate some Wild Boar urine when I made a short visit to Moravia last week.....it will be very helpful for her to learn to track the boar scent....something we are a bit short of in Devon!!
Last week saw me working back in CZ again....near the Polish border, and the nature of the work was such that if I managed to get 3 hours sleep a night, i was lucky! On my return I just wanted to crash out on the sofa...but someone (ie Tennant) decided that if mummy was on the sofa then he wanted to be there too! Since getting home the red stags are rutting and the roaring outside the bedroom windows all night is almost insufferable......so it looks like a few more sleepless nights yet!

Trials and tribulations

Thanks to everyone who entered their hounds under me at the Association of Bloodhound breeders Championship Trials yesterday.
There were 18 hounds competing in the Novice stake and by the 18th line my knees and feet were in serious trouble having walked jogged or run after every hound!! It would have been impossible without my 2 judges assistants Duncan Robertson and Ian Sayles, both of whom were great company.
We were so so lucky with the weather, and without doubt we saw some good hunting from every hound, even though the dry bare ground held little scent in places.
Everyone (as far as i was aware anyhow!) seemed to be happy with their lines, and certainly they were all very nice lines on beautiful ground, with none of the awful hedges, ditches, and wire that we sometimes come across.
Being brought up in a hunting background meant that I have also been brought up with the many disciplines that also go with it and it was in this respect that i felt my only sense of diapointment in the day.....turn out!!!
I have been brought up with the strict regime of making sure your appearance reflects your appreciation for your hosts and your sport. therefore I was really disapointed to some folk turned out to hunt their hounds in the most awful get ups. Im not talking fashion sense here!
If I was a member of the public and saw how some folk were dressed, I would be quite dubious of their intent.... or if i was the landowner, Id be having second thoughts about letting them on my land!! Please please can we get back to sensible country clothing for hunting our hounds? We dont need to look like we are on the beach or working for the red cross....is it too much to ask that we can look like people hunting their hounds in a rural environment??
OK my small moan over.....well done to all the winners, and a full set of results from the weeks trials will appear shortly on www.associationofbloodhoundbreeders.info

First Lieu TENNANT

All aboard!!! tennant had his 1st trip on the boat today. He loved it!!
He tried to jump ship when we were a couple of miles out to sea and it was only when he realised that he cant actually walk on water, that he decided to sit and watch us fishing instead. There was a worrying moment when he thought a long cast was actually some sort of retrieve work, but eventually he got bored with it all, went below deck and snoozed for a couple of hours!

Lifes a Boar

Logic has now started her training for her BZH Hunting exam under FCI rules.
I was slightly worried that it would affect her chances of hunting "clean boot" in the UK as it means encouraging her to hunt game....however...it seems that she is more than capable of distinguishing between wild boar and regular UK game...so as long as we dont get wild boar on her lines in the UK then there shouldnt be a problem!! Im working on the" steadiness to gun-shot" and started working her to the dummy launcher that we use for training Tennant. So far so good!!
We have several boar skins here prepared for dragging as a line but are now working on getting a fresh carcass to liven things up a bit!!

Logics travels!

Sorry that updates have been slow but what with me injuring my back and being laid up for so long, its been a struggle to sit at the computer....anyway.....thanks to EVERYONE for all their messages emails and calls regarding our recent trip to the Czech Republic with Logic.
It was a 2.5 thousand mile round trip...exhausting....but well worthwhile...
her BOB/BIS win was just a fantastic experience and more pix will appear here soon.

Tennants Travels

Tenant has been to stay with "granny and grandad" for a week and they sent me this terrific photo of him with their alpacas.......I am thinking of sending the hounds over there for some training now!!!

Nothing to do with hounds......

..................but just wanted to send a big hug to my friend Stanley (see photo I took while training in Dover this summer) who has , today,retired from his life long dream of being the oldest person to swin the channel. Stanley you are truly inspirational!

puppy sales

if anyone has sold a bloodhound or bloodhound puppy to someone with the surname ELLWOOD in the last couple of years can you please email me.

Going Under Cover

Poor tennant has gone undercover........hes very fed up that a) its continuously raining and b) my Mothers Border terrier (Leo) has come to stay for a week.
Leo was OK for about 24 hours but now hes grumpy and pinching the best spot on the sofa. The rain has put paid to Tennants garden meanderings as our acre of lovely lawns and shrubs now resembles an acre of mud bath! Tennant has decided hes not coming out of hiding until Leo has gone home and the rain has stopped!
The hounds have all got webbed feet from all the rain, and another 2 inches forecast tonight...oh joy!
My crocked back means that walking is nigh on impossible at the moment so its been especially difficult to get them fit enough for their overseas shows in a weeks time.

Do woodcock wear socks?

Up until my mishap last week the training of young Tennant was going great guns & we decided to introduce the dummy launcher.
This innocent piece of equipment is actually capable of putting a satellite into orbit...its so powerful...and its taken quite a few attempts to calm down the height and distance to something suitable for a 4 month old pup! Anyway.....Tennant decided that the launcher dummy wasnt to his liking...it just wasnt the same size/colour/weight as his other 4 dummies and he jolly well wasnt going to fetch it or even look at it! So A. had a brainwave and told me to take off my sock!
Once the dummy was wrapped in my sock ......a) it flew less distance and b) Tennant loved retrieving it. So...the question is....do woodcock wear socks and if not....will he ever retrieve one??!!

oh deer!

Some of you may know that we were training Tolerant to be a stalking (deer) dog, however after he died last year we hadnt thought much more about it and had planned to train our HWV instead. However there have been a couple of call-outs of late and so it was decided to train fergus instead. it would probably put paid to his working trials as encouraging a hound to hunt deer is not ideal for a trialshound, however it was decided he was the best candidate. Last Tuesday afternoon I crunched my disc in my back and was in agony....then with perfect timing a call came in for a wounded deer that needed tracking. By this time it was dark and I could barely walk...but we harnessed up fergus and Andrew had a lamp and a rifle and I had fergus! So we climbed up the hill and into the forest and tracked the deer through trees, rocks, brambles for over 2 miles in dark.....mostly on my hands and knees because i couldn t walk!! In the end I couldnt go any further and Andrew parked Fergus and me at the roadside...it was midnight by then...and walked home to get the Landrover and collect us!!
So the tracking was unsuccessful and my back was even more crocked and since then i have been stuck here on my back unable to move for 2 days. Fergus meanwhile is llooking forward to his next outing!!

more rain!

Rain Rain Rain!! will it ever end? The hounds have webbed feet!
David Gore managed to get over in between the showers so we could shoot some more pix of his lovely girls.......and then it had been arranged for me to test his "Beetle" for her working permit....well the moment he arrived at the flags the heavens opened and we were soaked to the skin......the wind howled and there were deer on the line and mud deep enough to lose a hound in...but.....she hunted beautifully and I was able to give her her permit and look forward to seeing her at trials.
Trials...now there is another thought....every year I swear I will get fitter for the hunting season.....this year is no different except that I am actually judging them this year and I am still not fit!!
I just keep everything crossed that the lead up to the trials are disaster-free as last time I judged I put my back ou the week before and struggled around like a 90 year old.....the time before that I sunk my landrover in a river the day before and had no transport so had to get the train to London and then another one to Bucks.....can you imagine what I looked like on the return journey at Paddington station, covered in mud and exhausted, its no wonder folk were taking a wide berth!!

Tennants trip to the CLA Gamefair.

well Tennant had a couple of days at the CLA Gamefair and as he found it all quite tiring, he went to sleep in the gundog breeds tent WHV static display with his sisters and mum for a few hours.....as seen here with Richard....(photo courtesty of Karen thankyou grandma!)
He also got to appear in the gundog parade in the big ring!!!
He had a great time browsing the trade stands and choosing his new training dummies personally.

vetting homes

I was in a discussion with another breeder about vetting potential homes this week and we both agreed that over the years we have got a couple of them wrong....luckily on those occasions the pups were returned and happily rehomed. However I was then quite surprised to find out how little actual "checking out" some other breeders do....none more so than when i heard on the grapevine about 3 pups in homes that I had no hesitaion in refusing a pup to!!! One of them even has a bad repution in several countries yet they were still sold a pup from the UK. What a sad state of affairs. of course we all make misjudgements of characters and no one is exempt...especially me! but its not hard to check out potential puppy owners with fellow breeders when they have been begging breeders for some long time and yet still no one wants to sell them a puppy...or do some people actully believe they are above doing this and that their knowledge is greater than everyone elses??
Meanwhile if anyone gets a usa enquiry and its the same one as i have been dealing with for 19 months then i can give you some pointers on not selling her a pup!!!

Papa Gustek

odpočitas v pokojoi Gustek, na duhovy most.

memorabilia

I was very kindly given several large boxes of bloodhound memorabilia by Eden Griffiths, that Pauline (Weatheroak Bloodhounds) had collected over more than 30 years.
Its all such interesting stuff that I can not stop reading it....with club newsletters going back to the early 1960s and so much info on hounds I had researched over the years, including photos and pedigrees.
One of the nicest things was the collection of bloodhound clippings, where Pauline had obviously taken an interest in others successes, and had cut out many many newspaper articles and photos depicting the highs and lows in the breed. This is a truly remarkable archive and one that I am proud to be the new custodian of.

Rule number one!

Before tennant arrived it was mutually agreed...by hounds, humans and the cat.....that Rule Number one would be that he would not be allowed on the sofas....so....as you can see.....that worked well!!!

thankyou!

Thanks to everyone who so kindly emailed or rang to say "well done" to Logic for winning the CC and BOB at the club show....it was nice to receive all your messages...especially after the lovely (I think not!) comment from another exbibitor which was obviously meant to just take the lovely edge off a great day!

boys boys boys

Well with 2 girls in season at the moment the boys are all getting a bit hot blooded....so they have had some time out swimming in the lake this week....which has calmed everyone down a bit!
We are getting several puppy enquiries at the moment, however we do NOT breed to supply a puppy market not do we breed just to reduce the waiting list a bit (!!) we only plan a litter when we are looking for something to continue our lines and are wanting a new youngster for ourselves.
further more we dont just breed from some bitch to make her "pay her way"......we breed only from those we feel have something important and special to offer the breed......from those who we feel will be able to improve some part of our lines....and with this in mind we are hoping for a litter early next year.

mouths

recent discussions have thrown up the age old subject of mouths again. At a recent breed seminar, one of our most respected breeders and judges with decades of experience was asked about mouths, and she agreed, like me, that no hound with a bad mouth should be bred from.
Recent judging critiques have suggested that bad mouths need watching again......i really hoped that this problem had been removed from our gene pool but it seems not, so one must really question as to why anyone would want to breed from a hound with a bad mouth? i really cannot think of a good reason.

at last!

at last hes arrived....our little Hungarian boy....well if you are going to do a European tour then its logical to go to Hungary as its only a stones throw from CZ!!!

whip round for a sofa

OK folks I think we are having a whip-round for a new (ish) sofa for Fiona!!! Hers is slowly being disected by Berkley...aka Farlap Baračnik....failing that maybe theres a free cycle in somerset Fiona??? Hopefully you can get something that looks better than this one?

slightly more cheery

well on a slightly more cheery note today.....we finally have a date for the arrival of our new baby "Tennant" and are just counting down the days now. .....12 and counting!! photos soon I promise.
Thanks to everyone who has emailed to say how sorry they were about gad and Cythar losing their babies. Glad to say he has his other litter due very soon by AI in Europe, so fingers crossed!

so sad

well we are so sad today, having heard that Cythars "wife" has lost her puppys. Its so maddening when you hear about people with little care for the future of the breed who are just out to make a quick buck......they seem to have no problems producing a litter with the minimum of care or attention....then you get a really special mating like this one that has so much riding on it....you even get to see the scan of the babys....then this happens and you begin to wonder why you try so hard to do the right thing.

Danish News

Good news from our puppy owners in Denmark....at 8 months old he went to his 1st show and 1 st trial....and won both....best Puppy in Show at the Danish Club show and 1st in his working trials...well done Henrick!!

Having spent all the week laid up indoors with a nasty debilitating virus, I decided today to leave my sick bed and get out into the sunshine for a gentle walk. I opted to take the 2 pups as they are still at a clingy stage and tend not to disappear over the horizon like the others......I also took along the deerhounds for a much needed leg stretch.
One of our fields has a large heap of soil in it which makes a good vantage point to check there are no deer lurking before the hounds go galloping into the grass. Having given them the "all clear" they charged about in the grass like lunatics....rolling and running....then all of a sudden the pups saw something in the grass.....their hackles went up and they started baying and then turned tail and ran back to mother. Intrigued at what they had found I ran over to look, only to find a badger snoring its head off curled up in the grass!!
As I tried to sneak away, the deerhounds sussed that something interesting was happeing and came bowling over and ran right into it...next minute there was a hissing spitting snarling badger with 2 rather surprised deerhounds trying to get their delicate feet out of the way...plus the puppies by now in full bay again. Badger was last seen heading for the hills at a very fast gallop and the puppies still didnt really know what all the excitement was about!

At long last Tarnish has her cast off her leg.....I just wish someone would tell her that she is meant to have another 6 weeks complete rest!
Cythar ivaliruz is very proud to hear that he is going to be a daddy in a few weeks time....we cant wait to see his 1st crop of pups.

honestly - some people!

Some people really are unbelievable......I mean how sad is it that someone telephones a breeder, pretending to be interested in the breed......when their true agenda is to try and discredit a very genuine and honest breeder. Come along luv, do I LOOK like I came down in the last shower??? Many years as a press photographer has taught me to recognise when I am hearing bullsh*t! Next time you want to phone me please just use your real name!

Well another busy week....Tarnish is causing mayhem with her huge plaster cast (she broke her leg in a mid field collision with Gravity). For some reason the vets feel the need to wrap the entire thing in cammo patterned vet wrap, which at 1st is very scary to another hound but now they are used to it, it is seen more as "lunch"!
Barvička continues her puppy chewing saga by overnight eating a complete book plus half a beam from our 13thC cob cottage. Hope the beam wasnt an original piece of timber as unsure what the listings people would say about that!!!

Welcome to the blog

well after so many folk requesting a regular update on the hounds, we decided to start this blog.
Hopefully you will find it interesting and informative and it will be a great way to update you with events as they occur.

What a busy week it has been with Adela Veverkova coming to stay (pictured here with Farlap Basnicky) and to take her puppies to their 1st UK show. Then there was a visit from the lovely Bagr and his family, so we could see how he was progressing...what a big lad!

Congratulations to Fiona with Farlap Baračnik on winning the res CC at only his 2nd show and at just 8 months old.