Our Barbet Breeding Journey – The Start
It starts with a desire to breed. There is something about the Barbet that I just can’t define. We wanted to be more involved than just being parents.
Lots of people think it would be a lovely thing to do, but that does not mean we should just go ahead with it.
If we are going to explore this idea of Barbet breeding, the first thing to do is assess whether our home and garden is suitable for our plans, and make changes as necessary. Then we have to do a whole lot of research. This is something we have already done, as we bred Silver Spotted British Shorthair cats for ten years, but stopped breeding when the gene pool had become too limited. The majority of working males were too closely related to our females, and those that weren’t, were not of the quality we had already achieved, so we decided it was better to stop breeding than compromise.
As we had existing knowledge and experience, our research focused on the differences between breeding cats and dogs.
Although, we had considered breeding Great Danes and went part way down the road a few years ago before we decided it was not right for us. Once we had gathered that information, we turned to researching our chosen breed, the Barbet, and those who bred them.
And so, our plans progressed.
Health tests, DNA tests, and assessment against the breed standard, happened for Remy. And the search for the perfect girl to join our family and become our foundation breeding girl began. Having fallen in love with the breed, I had already done plenty of research and was familiar with quite a few breeders, their dogs, and their lines, so I contacted those on my shortlist. We were absolutely delighted to be approved as parents by our first choice of breeder, Renate Zuber Morgenthaler, of vom Zulimo Barbets in Switzerland. Several months later, the news arrived that Lennox was pregnant. We eagerly awaited the arrival of the puppies. Ten were born, three boys and seven girls. Now we had to put our expertise and knowledge to work to choose which of the seven girls was right for us, Remy, and breeding.