Six Week Evaluation for the Snack Cakes Litter : Little Debbie

Little Debbie (Pickles) at Six Weeks

Abagail (Abba) Zabba and Rocketdog Rockford (Rocky) Rhoades got together to produce a wonderful litter of pet quality puppies. This was the third and final litter for Abba Zabba (who will be spayed and retired to our farm). This is the fifth litter for Rocky and his first as our only breeding male. This litter presented some challenges which I will note in this introduction, but the outcome today is that we have six wonderful and healthy puppies to evaluate.

We have been writing litter evaluations since 2015 using a Six Point Evaluation which takes into account the five key points of the American Kennel Club descriptive criteria for the breed, and one point which we assign subjectively and is based solely on looks and personality. It's a good idea to look at Our Six Point Evaluation page to familiarize yourself with how we determine what is important in each evaluation. There were some health issues in this litter which should be discussed prior to evaluating the individuals: 

• One little girl had heart murmurs and an inoperable double hernia, among other things, which eventually led us to make the hard choice to relieve her suffering. This was our only "Sad Puppy".
• The second major problem came in the first puppy of the litter, a little male named HoHo, who displayed a condition commonly known as "Failure to Thrive". Happily for us all, we caught this lack of eating skills defect early on and were able to hand feed him back to health and he is now a healthy and scrappy little boy.
• The third problem we encountered as the happy problem of puppies overeating and having weight become an issue in early development. Two of our pups need special training to get them up and running on their feet. We caught the condition in the first weeks and were able to train the pups with lazy backsides to use their legs as they should.

Since Abba Zabba is retiring, were are not worried about passing bad traits on to future offspring.  We haven't had health issues here since we retired Bit O'Honey early and since Bit O'Honey and Abba  Zabba are littermate sisters from the same kennel we suppose these problems were genetic in some ways, but none of this should be a problem for the breed going forward. Certain of the pups will not have the option for purchase of breeding rights and we do this for the good of the breed more than any warning of future health concerns. We expect no further health troubles in the litter and have not experienced any health problems in the past four weeks. 

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 Of the six pups, Little Debbie (family named Pickles) has been the easiest of them all. She is a wonderful, beautiful little girl with all that one wants to see in a Basset hound puppy. Funny, inquisitive, and cuddly; also chompy and loves hard play too. Pickles is our Beauty Queen. She loves to cuddle, loves her food, and loves nice play with her litter mates, but she is often found playing alone with a toy too.

She favors her father for looks and style, but has a slightly tighter coat owing to her mother's Normand Basset genes. She is of normal weight, at 8.6 pounds, but carries the weight very well on stout forelegs and chunky hips. Her stance is not strong, but otherwise is normal and healthy. Pickles is a well built puppy with long ears which droop from their attachment at the extreme back of her well domed skull. She does have a slight overbite in her jaw setting, but this is very minor and will likely correct itself as her adult teeth come in. She is not a European Basset for size or weight, but is relatively close to it in most other ways. She is dynamite and the only candidate for show quality marks in this litter.  But she is not of show quality.

Pickles is lovely to look at. Her sleek body is covered well in soft, shiny, mostly black, fur. But she is definetly a tri-colored hound with symmetrically marked coat and facial fur.  The entire puppy, when taken as a whole and without knowing her history, would appear as would a much larger type of Basset hound. She will become a fifty pound Basset with one-hundred pound good looks.

She receives 4.5 points for AKC Standards and one point for pretty. The best of the litter at 5.5 of six possible points. Breeding is not a good idea with Pickles and rights are not being offered to anyone not a professional breeder of Basset Hounds due to the special nature of her few structural flaws.