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.