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| Chocodile 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.
At the time of this writing Chocodile has yet to find a forever family. It you are interested there is an email widget to the left of this article if you are interested.
Chocodile is a lovely little girl. At birth she was inky black in color with little white or brown fur; hard to see in low light conditions. She favors her mother in color, though does have a bit more white fur, and also favors her mother in body cues. She is in it for the fun. Loves playing unless she is asleep and is hard to keep on your lap since the world is so very interesting to her. We expect she will develop into a carbon copy of her mother for shape.
She was one of the two puppies requiring a bit of additional training to get her up and running around as other puppies do. We point at excessive eating as the cause of her slight "Swimmer's Syndrome". But one she got to her feet she began running as one would expect out of a Basset Puppy. Today she shows little of her earlier proclivity toward lounging around, but she needs exercise to be truly happy. Chocodile has adequate bone size and the body shape of an eel, tapering smoothly from shoulder to tail. She has a weak stance, so again, make exercise a big part of your puppy's life. Her head shape, ear and jaw wetting, are all very good. But show quality dogs take on much more European shapes (much more blocky and loose) , so Chocodile will become a fine pet with very little show quality to her.
Chocodile is colored as is her Dame. Mostly black fur with a small white underside. And she will continue as she is until some brown fur shows up later in life. She is a lovey puppy, but difficult to see int he dark. She will likely be very clever and you will need to lock the gate and check the fence for holes. She will become an excellent companion and will likely not be given to a lot of barky behavior.
Of the five AKC derived points Chocodile received 4.5 because of the general state of this litter. She gains the full point for pretty though. So she is 5.5 point of the six. She might be bred providing the rights are purchased, but we are not recommending breeding in any of this litter unless you are a professional breeder and know what you are looking for.
