The End of the Silly Season of Spring 2026

One of Lilly's first litter. 
This was at two weeks old.

We are finally coming to the end of the Spring Season and returning to reason. But the past four weeks has become quite a drag on our general happiness.

There's a lot of good stuff in the breeding business. Puppies are always great. Having too many Basset Hounds is a bunch of joy. But there are a lot of horrific stuff too. A lot of Bassets is a mess. They make a lot of noise. On balance it works for us. But if there were one thing I would have written out of the script it would be the Silly Season that happpens twice a year. Girls making ready, and being ready, for breeding, is terrible. Especially when there's four viable girls and one boy absolutely dedicated to his work.

It starts off easy enough. One of the girls show signs of coming into season. . . . A little bitchiness, some backside swelling. . .  We know the score and have seen this movie before. We start being careful with our boy Rocky at this point but he's not that interested. Then we see another girl starting into the process and so forth. We usually have one girl on deck for each season, a rotating schedule of two year breaks between litters, and we start putting Rocky and whichever girl is on the schedule together at night and segregating the non-scheduled girls elswhere so that we don't have any accidents. 

What a face! A little beauty.
This was the Ice Cream Specialties Litter.

A week later in the Sillly Season we effectively have three seperated groups. We have the older dogs who have been to the Vet and are not in the breeding program; we have the non-breeding group, all girls wanting to be mothers and all of them crazy; and we have the two Hounds involved in our next litter. They hate being seperated, but at first things go along as if their world is still fairly normal.

A week goes by and Rocky is doing his job with, in this Spring effort, Lilly (in her second litter). Whichever girl is involved doesn't seem to like the idea for a day or so and Rocky fumbles around like he hasn't done this before. After a few day we hear a yelp and the girl gets super happy about it. Rocky goes crazy at this point. He wants more. 

The other girls all begin wondering out loud why they aren't involved in this whole Rocky is my boyfreind thing. They let everyone know they are unhappy and the farm gets pretty noisy.  We have to start using a leash to shift groups around. One group will be inside the house with us for a few hours or so. Rocky and Lilly are in the segregation kennel out on the porch. The older dogs are in the yard. We rotate them every few hours so that everyone has a chance at people time, yard time, and bed time. But none of them are happy for very long. This works for a few days. Then it gets even more crazy.

Look at those ears!

This morning I have had all three groups singing to each other since four in the morning. Rocky, who has done his job thouroughly is now more interested in the other girls, makes a mooing sound and sings the blues. This starts the breeding aged girls to baying in their group. And the older dogs inside the house join into the singing because they want to. This happens three or four times a day. There's no stopping it.

For all the ears our combined tangle of hounds have in total inches of ear, none of them will listen at this point. Nobody is a good girl or good boy. The best we can hope for is to not have someone attack another someone viciously for looking at them wrong. Rocky is a strong boy, so leashing him only works if there's nothing he really wants within his reach. The girls are all clever so they test fences and run toward any open door. The old dogs are not helpful either. It is pandemonium. But it is beginning to slack off a bit.

They had quite a mixed bag in their first outing. 
We can't wait to find out what comes next.

Lilly is probably pregant now, so her Silly Season has come to an end. The younger girls are all beginning to wind it down a bit, at least they aren't as bitchy today as they were yesterday. Lucy, who started this whole thing, is finally returning to her normal but impossible self. We still have a dangerous little Pixie testing our fences and patience every minute. And Rocky, who hasn't eaten for a week, is still super interested in finding out who can come out to play, but he's not really being playful.

In three or four days the Silly Seacon of Spring 2026 will end and we will put our dogs back together and wait for Whelping Day (about seven weeks out).  Then a different set of crazy things will add to our days for about ten weeks. 

Breeding is a wonderful job and having a breeding kennel is rewarding and often quite fun. But it's a labor of love. There's so much joy and fun, some sadness at times. But today it's a lot of craziness. 

Summer Puppies are on the Way

One of the Ice Cream Specialty Litter
This girls was true image of her mother.

It seems strange to write this, most of our projects and predictions are off by a bit as a matter of routine, but our breeding calendar is actually going along as we thought it might. Though everything is still subject to change without notice given . . .

Dolce DeLeche (AKC) and Rocketdog Rockford Rhoades (AKC) came together this morning to begin the process of bringing therri second litter to our farm.  This next litter should come around the Fourth of July for delivery to new families in the first week of September (at the earliest).  Here are the articles written for their last litter. The articles for all the pups continue from there.

More to follow. . . 

From Rocky's fourth litter
The great looks of the Father

This is an exceptional pairing.

 

The Candies are Leaving (starting today)

 The Penny Candies are beginning to leave for their new families today, three today, a few more tomorrow, perhaps one on Sunday. So it will soon become a lot less noise and laundry around here. But we will miss them. 

The life of a breeder is one of some sorrow and great joy. But, as I've always said, having a litter of puppies is like having a favorite excentric aunt come to visit for a few months. Lovely to anticipate the visit, wonderful to have the day arrive (though it's a lot of work and little sleep), and very nice to see her go home because she can be exhausting at times. (I once used the Yiddish Proverb of the Goat, but the Aunt visiting is a bit more on target.) The bottom line is that they come to us and go away, a sort of bitter sweet thing throughout.

Since their evaluations we have seen quite a bit of development in the pups. We have had three days of relative warm weather and cool early Spring sunshine. So the Candies have been able to go outside for a few hours a day. At first none of them could do stairs and spent most of the time close to the front door, this morning there was a stampede of fur flying through the doorway and out onto the front porch. On day one the hens would come in and intimidate them, this morning one hen was brave enough but three puppies frightened her away.  

We had one minor health thing. The Vet. sold us flea drops called Revolution and many of the pups had allergic reactions (hives). There was nothing too worrisome about this and we used a bit of Cortizone10 on the spots to clear them right up. We lost some hair where the meds were placed, but nothing to visible for the most part. One of the pups had a farily severe reaction and we had to use one-quarter dose Benedryl tablets in some peanut butter for a few days. The problem is fading away slowly and the Vet has seen the puppy three times since (just for the sake of the new family). We recommend and usually use Capstar chewables if there is any signs of fleas in the puppies. Capstar kills the fleas in just a few minutes but does nothing for the longer term. We will go back to the chewable for safety's sake. We do use K9 Advantage in all our dogs about twice a year for those looking for a good recommendation. The K9 Advantage hasn't given us any trouble at all, but we only use drops on the adult dogs too, so there is a difference. 

Everyone has doubled in weight since the last weighing at six weeks. We have reduced feeding to two larger meals and some snacks to bring them into line with their family feedings.  You never experience anything like it when nine hungry puppies dive into dinner.  Of course what goes in must come out and yesterday we washed five loads of laundry. We do one cup of food at morning and evening meals in our adults dogs and this is usually enough. A puppy might eat too much, but never get full at the same time. Bassets can have sour tummies so we try to keep the intake to the right level to avoid having to watch them recycle their dinner.

We will treasure the peace and quiet, but we will definetly miss them, those that go. Two of the pups  will be staying with us for the advanced Basseting Course which goes on for a few more weeks. This is good for the Mother and great for the pups, and not too bad for us as well. We will miss them all and cannot wait to get started missing them.