Hello from Julie Weidner, a teckel owner in Basel, Switzerland

Few days ago we received this super nice e-mail from Julie Weidner from Switzerland. What a treat!
It was wonderful to hear from you Julie - best of luck with Freddie and a future puppy! Keep in touch. We are very happy to be of some help to you.

Dear Jolanta and John,

I commented on your wonderful story of Elli the other day and realized that I should really just introduce myself/write you a little note. I've been reading your blog on and off for the past 2-2.5 years... ever since my partner and I decided that we wanted a Wirehaired Dackel for our very own.

I'm originally American (from Wisconsin) and I'm currently working towards my PhD in Molecular Biology at the University of Basel, CH. Anyhow, I convinced my Swiss boyfriend (also a PhD student at the ETH Zurich) after a couple years of being together that we really needed a little something in our lives to take away the lab stress. I have to admit, it was the best decision we ever made. We decided after a number of months and meeting the wonderful dogs from Kennel Barbwired (colleagues and friends of ours) that we wanted a Dackel.

In summer of 2010 we picked up our first puppy (Fallilou du Sangre Bleu, aka Freddie) from a new breeder outside of Paris. He had a nice pedigree and we were optimistic of what the future would bring as his parents (Kobeddus Effendi x Canaille de la Meute à Chéops) have both show and hunting backgrounds .

We have been super active with Freddie and participate in obedience and BHP training as well and Jagd training here in Switzerland and Germany. Your website has really been my go to for a LOT of tracking/spurlaut, etc... questions! My German is nowhere near fluent and having an English blog at my disposal has been so fantastic. All the literature up until I found you website was German or Swedish or Italian and very frustrating when trying to learn all about tracking, and general tips on training the dogs.

Freddie was born in France and now lives in Switzerland

I recently picked up John's book on blood tracking and am super excited to read it. We recently took part in our first 1200m/20hr Schweissprüfung this autumn, which went off better than we could have hoped for our first trial with our first dog (82pts, 2nd prize). We are planning on getting our second dog this year and I'm planning on using some of the info from the book for training. I love hearing about how the Field trials, shows, tracking, etc... works in the US (since I'm now very accustomed to the rules in Europe and FCI).



Anyhow, I'm sorry to bore you with so much background, etc... I really just wanted to show my appreciation to you for what you have done for the breed. I think it is really great to have such a knowledgeable and active set of Rauhaar breeders in the US. I wish you the best with your two new little ones (I just saw all the S litter pictures) and wish you a happy, healthy and successful 2012!

Best regards,
Julie Weidner

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Some of you might have not seen this kind of color in wirehaired dachshunds. You can read more about its genetics here. Chocolate (or brown) color is controlled by a recesive gene b and, a wild boar dachshund can carry this color. We had a big surprise when we bred a wild boar FC Gela von Rauhenstein to wild boar Drake von Moosbach-Zuzelek (a son of Alfi von der Hardt-Höhe). This was our "H" litter.  As it turned out, both Gela and Drake had a recessive gene b (their genotype was Bb) and they produced three chocolate pups and three wild boar pups.

Hobbit at the age of 8 weeks

Hickory at 14 weeks