NORWEGIAN BUHUNDS
I am sure you all know that Crufts 2021 has been postponed from March to July 15th -18th, with Pastoral Day being Sunday 18th July. It has also been announced that entries will be capped for each breed, how this will work I have no idea, but I suggest that you get your entries in early and not do leave them to the last minute. Entries will open at the end of March and close on 31st May. There will also be no paper entries, online only. If you do not already do this it is very easy, you just have to register yourself and your dog with Fosse Data, then you can use the system every time you want to enter a show where the entries go to Fosse, or you can of course do the same thing with Higham press for other shows. With the capping of entries, I think it is very unlikely that there will be Discover Dogs, as here social distancing would be impossible to manage, but this has not been announced yet.
I do not know if you are watching a programme on BBC2 on a Thursday evening called ‘12 Puppies and Us,’ it is repeated on Saturday morning on BBC 2.It does show how necessary something like Discover Dogs is, with some people buying puppies without any idea of what they are letting themselves in for, and frighteningly apparently 1 in 4 puppies bought during lockdown have come from puppy farms, without the buyers realising it. One couple wanted a particular breed but when they realised, they would have to wait some months, they moved onto another breed where of course they found puppies online. Happily, the show does seem to have a good behaviourist, who warned them that they might be going to see a puppy from a puppy farm and told them about the warning signs to look out for. Overall, I think it is good programme although I was not very happy when they said a ‘Pomsky’ was a new rare breed!
One other thing about Crufts is qualification. All dogs with a stud book number are of course qualified for Crufts for life, otherwise dogs will have had to qualify between 21st January 2019 and 25th January 2021, by being 1st or 2nd in a breed class where CCs were on offer. This year there will be no 3rd place qualification. If a dog won a class at Crufts 2020 it also qualifies. There is also a qualification if the dog has been placed 1st_ 4th in a group or a puppy group at a Premier Open show. For further ways to qualify please look at Crufts.org.uk
Sadly, no puppies will have qualified and no dogs that were not old enough to have qualified for Crufts 2020.If things get back to a kind of normal in 2021, there should be some shows where these dogs can qualify for Crufts March 2022. Two dogs that came to our open show and who hopefully we will see in 2021 qualifying for 2022, were Mary Doss’s Kilgenthal Bran Mak Morn and Marie Corin’s Kilgenthal Almuric.
Below Marie has written about all the Buhunds she and her family had in the past, which she entitled: –
‘Why Buhunds? My family first had a dog when I was 6, after along campaign to convince my Dad to agree to getting one. My parents stumbled across Buhunds when looking through a book of dog breeds, they were taken mostly by a Buhund’s size, compatibility with families and the fact that they are easy to train(haha)!They were fortunate enough to be pointed in the direction of Madeleine and Roger Thomas of the Squirreldene kennel and soon we were coming home with a pup, Petter (he was the litter bother of Ch Squirreldene Bjanka who was the bitch record holder for many years, for those who’ve been around long enough to remember her ) Petter was a gentle soul, putting up with whatever two young children would throw at him. At one point he was dressed up in dolls clothes and pushed around in a pram! We would attend shows, for quite a few years mostly for fun of being around other dogs. When Petter was 3 we took in another male Buhund,Drummer (Squirreldene Caro), who was a handsome wolf sable. The hope was that the two would be best of friends, but that never really happened, in fact once they had a fight when the postman came to the front door and went straight through a glass door panel! Fast forward a few years, both the boys had passed away and I had left home. My parents were not going to get another Buhund, but then magically Remus (Ch Squirreldene Conversano) went to live with them for his ‘retirement’. What a beauty he was too. After Remus passed, they were not going to get another one! Absolutely not. But then along came Odin (Bulabs Kittyson, who needed rehoming after sadly one of his owners became allergic to him. He was tall and sturdy, with a tail that did not stop wagging and eyes to melt your heart.
When the time came for Adam and I to get a dog of our own, we both agreed we wanted a dog with personality…so it did not take long for me to come up with the ideal breed, with plenty of personality and the only breed I have ever really ever known and loved, Buhunds are just a bit addictive I think.’ Thanks, Corin yes, they certainly are addictive.
Margaret Deuchar margaretdeuchar@gmail.com
The views expressed in Margaret’s Breed Notes are hers and hers alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Norwegian Buhund Club of the UK.
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