Chuck and Moose, and some random thoughts on breeding

We are going to continue the thread of  spring field trials with some pictures of Chuck Collier and his three-year-old male dachshund Moose. Moose's registered name is Nurmi von Moosbach-Zuzelek and we wrote about him before.

Because of his remote location and long distances Chuck attends only local field trials in Michigan, and this spring he went to one weekend of trials given by Wolverine Dachshund Club on May 8-9. on Saturday Moose was first in the open dog stake and he also was the best of open stakes. I got really nice pictures of from that trial taken by Patt Nance (thank you Patt!).

We received a very enthusiastic feedback from friends who attended the field trials. They all loved Moose, and were very impressed with his performance. We are impressed with him too. As far as blood tracking goes, Chuck and Moose have found so far 26 deer and 3 bear. Moose has a terrific temperament, nice size and he opens freely on rabbits. We are thinking about breeding our Paika to Moose next year, when Paika turns two years old. Some people, especially in Germany, will shake their heads as dogs with the coats like Moose's are disqualified from breeding in the German DTK system.  The smooth coat like his is inherited as a recessive trait. In the US we are working with a very small gene pool of wires bred out of hunting European bloodlines. A dog as talented as Moose should not be excluded from being used in breeding just because of his coat. Actually he would be a very good match for bitches with fuller, softer coat, and Paika falls into this category. Our litters are not registered with the DTK anymore, and currently we breed only AKC-registered pups. I found that DTK breeding policies were too restrictive for our American situation and the exclusion of smooth dachshunds out of wire parents from further breeding would narrow our gene pool too much.

Anyway, I know that there are quite a few nice, talented dogs out there now. However, if these dogs are never brought to any events such as blood tracking tests, workshops, seminars, field trials, NATC shows etc, other breeders will never have a chance to see and evaluate them. So if you own a male that you would like to be used at stud, you must particpate in some performance events so others can see the dog for themselves. We will never breed to a dog that we have not had a chance to evaluate, even when he comes from our own breeding.