Living
Crufts is already fading in our memories as preparations begin for next year! I really enjoyed talking to those rescues invited to the Kennel Club stand on all four days to meet and greet the hundreds of doggy visitors.
As a pregnancy enters the last couple of weeks a breeder’s thoughts will turn towards whelping. It is unlikely the whelping will begin on the calculated date. The 63-day landmark is only an average figure and it is influenced by several biological...
I make no apology for revisiting Craigie Aitchison and his work. Along with David Hockney’s Dachshunds and Lucian Freud’s Whippets, Aitchison’s Bedlington Terrier pictures are some of the most iconic dog images of the late 20th-early 21st century.
Nobody can deny one of the most stunning breeds to fill the eye is the beautiful Irish (red) Setter. Recently I had the honour to judge varieties and BIS at an open show. Trotting into the veteran class came the most exquisitely turned out Irish...
My method of breeding is quite simple – breed quality to quality and then select quality. Last time we looked at the principles behind breeding for quality. This time we need to look at the practical methods that we might use to achieve quality.
Reverting back once more to the subject of early post-natal eclampsia, Suzanne Moorhouse of the Willowmead Bearded Collies kindly rang to tell me of her experience with this frightening problem.
It was in the early 1960s that I started dog training at a Kennel Club registered club and by that time there was already a reasonable selection of training clubs up and down the country.
The late Mark Birley epitomised elegance, refinement and style and was at the cutting edge of what was and still is fashionable London society. Eton educated, he was born into a privileged family, the son of the portrait painter Sir Oswald Birley.
Now, here’s a fascinating question: when, at any type of canine event, do you most want a good cup of tea or coffee? Answers have varied from half way up or down a motorway to arriving or leaving the venue’s car park, from just after arriving at...
Each day at Crufts there will be invited breed rescues in hall 3 and on hound day two of my favourite welfare organisations will be attending.
Having succeeded in getting a bitch pregnant, there are still many pitfalls for the dog breeder to negotiate. A developing foetus can be felt or seen at around 24 days.
‘My Best Friend’ was the theme of this year’s Young Kennel Club Artist of the Year competition which is now in its fifth year. It gives young members the opportunity to fuse their love of dogs with their passion for art.
