Our Kennel:   History Of Our Development With The French Brittany
 

Everything has a story. This is ours for the French Brittany.

We were born in 1940 wanting to hunt. It was a genetic thing in my view. My parents, grandparents and ancestors to Adam and Eve were farmers and stockmen as far as I know. Having access to my parents farm and pastureland afforded space to learn to hunt. Neighbors were friendly then and permission to hunt was easy to come by. I suppose I harvested my first rabbit at about eight to ten years old. I took my first bobwhite quail at twelve years old. I remember it well. And that was by walking the habitat edge and flushing on foot on my parent's farm. The gun was my Dad's 12-gauge full choke single shot he bought from the Montgomery Wards catalog as a young married man. Dad was a meat hunter for the family in his prime. I never got to hunt with him because of his ill health by the time I was old enough. But I heard the stories.

I hesitate to write it, but I did not know there were "bird dogs" until I was about twenty-three years old. There just were not any, to my knowledge, in my growing up area. We did not travel out of our neighborhood much. One day in 1964 a friend called and asked if I would like to have a birddog pup. I asked, "what is a bird dog pup"? He explained. I said, "yes." And, I have had many since. We have had lots of fun.

Now, let's skip ahead to 1984. At that time we had "Americanized Brittanies" and other breeds of  bird dogs. We reared an occasional litter, partly because we had two boys at home and I wanted them to experience some of the fun of that. My son Branden had selected a pup of a breeding we had done several times and were content with. But, pneumonia took the pup before it was grown. We discussed raising another for him or trying to find one from someone else. He suggested that if we raised one, he would be out of high school before he got to hunt  it much. So, we tried to locate one of known breeding in our region. None was to be had.

Prior to this time, I had read articles about the French Brittany and how the French people had bred and selected the dogs. It appealed to me and I took the misfortune of the pneumonia-claimed pup to be our opportunity, or an omen, to investigate this French Brittany a bit more.

After much time, effort, and what seemed like a fortune in phone calls, we bought a female and male French Brittany pup from a U.S. source. The female was Branden's, the male was mine (R.L).

Branden had never trained an animal, but he and "Sabrie" did fine. I was impressed. My dog "Duke" came along excellent as well. Both made good, fun dogs and other people were impressed. Pups were requested so Duke & Sabrie made some.

After we had Duke and Sabrie for several years, I ordered a multigenerational pedigree. That was difficult to find in those days, near impossible. When it came, I discovered our dogs were one-eighth outcross to Americanized Brittanies.

My interest in the critters had increased, so we decided to try to secure a couple pups direct from France from a good breeder. After much effort, we located the kennel of Du Buisson De Choisel, and Cachou and Caline came to us.

I think that it is important to say that all of our imported dogs came from France, the country of origin. We decided on that from the beginning. They were two fine pups and dogs. A walking hunter should want none better. They were incredibly easy to let learn and as happy as can be. I could tell stories a long time about these two dogs. Suffice to say that they taught me that I wanted to stay with this breed and do more with them.

We had no idea in the 1980's to mid 1990's that we would be still breeding and providing pups into 21st century. But, here we are. Had we planned that far ahead we would have done different.

It was at this time that we started calling our small kennel, "Dalrymple's 100% French Brittanys." In 2002, we gave our kennel and dogs a more official name. We are now: "The Rolling Red Prairie Kennel." In French it is: Elevage de la Savane Rouge Ondulante.

During the late years with Cachou and Caline, we got two pups from the Pigenette Kennel in France. They were good; Ermine and Etiole. Etiole, the last, died of kidney failure in 2001. They too made good pups. Then came Hardy Du Hameau De Sorny, and others to take it to today. Photos in this web page show them.

And, in more recent years we have imported others and selected still others from more recent breeding of our own. But, we still yearn for Cachou, Caline, and Etiole especially. All were good, but these were the cream at the top of the milk of our early French Brittanies.

More recent imports and home-raised French Brittanies can be seen on the web page, too.

Hardy has proven himself well. He has been a fine hunter, good athlete, and a prepotent sire. He is getting old. Iroine himself has made many good pups. Hardy and Iroine are "retired" (2003) and finishing life with young hunters and families.  Osage, a relatively new imported sire, has made some of the best pups, too. We have high hopes for him. Our newest male, Tahdaste, is a fine looking dog and doing well in early training and his first litter looks great.

Home-raised Lakota and Oto are very intense with bird instincts and are making some fine pups. Both are good "natural" retrievers. Ottowa is a natural retriever and has good instincts and is producing good pups. Osage has produced among the most pretty pups we have had. Our new females, Selgine, Samba, and Susiane are all excellent on the instincts. All are natural retrievers. And our newest female Tishumiko is a good natural retriever. As I write this, she is just a beginner on field birds.  Lakota, Oto, and Ottowa will be retired in 2004.


Do We Hunt Our Dogs?

You have seen a bit of abstract on how we started and progressed with the French Brittany. In and among all of that is our human life cycle, too.

I got my first bird dog at age twenty-three. I got my first French Brittany at age forty-four. I am now over three-score plus years and hoping to go to 90. The opportunity to hunt locally has dwindled due to poor bird crops, change in land environment, and changed land access. And the body and the mind have changed. When I was about twenty-three to fifty-five, I hunted very often on wild birds. That was good for the dogs and me. But, the changes came. We had to hunt a bit less often, work and farming took a time, the sons grew up and were gone, and ever so gradually we shifted more emphasis to breeding French Brittanies and providing pups to those so interested. That did not happen overnight and part of it was a hunting alternative. We still hunt and plan to "forever." Two of my friends hunted to their late seventies to early eighties. I hope to do the same. But, it has to be different than before.

All of our dogs were hunted, and are hunted, especially to test and develope their instincts. But, the hurt in my feet and the ache in my knees dictate that we do it different than a decade or more ago. We still hunt the wild ones, and have some on our own range land, but we depend a lot on our portable quail run that affords us a lot of opportunity to catch, release, hunt and recall, or to release, flush, hunt and recall. The dogs learn quickly and we do not have to walk miles and miles to get it done. Look at the part: "Our Farm, Kennel, and Recreation."
 

We do not breed a new dog until we have trained and tested it, and we are content with it's bird hunting instincts.

We are often asked, "Do you hunt your dogs?" Yes, we do, but the style and intensity is different than in prior times.

Do we trial?  Not yet.  I expect we will do some regional trialing in the future.  We are fortunate to have a full life.   One cannot do everything.  At present, we think our place is to provide good pups for folks who want to contest them.


Our Plans For the Future

The other information under "Our Kennel" should well describe our past up to the present time with the French Brittany . In summary, we have had the French Brittany 28 years (in 2004) since 1984. We have imported many for hunting and breeding, since 1987.  We have had imported the French Brittany for 17 years in 2004.

We are at a point in life's circle that we cannot do all the things of younger times. That makes room for other opportunities. Among those opportunities is the plan to maintain and help improve the French Brittany in the USA. We have been told our breedings from the mid-1980's to today have been very helpful to the breed. We are comfortable with what we have done. We plan to try to do better to the end. We think our new dogs imported recently from France, and those to be in the future, will help do that.