Breed Priorities – The Basenji
Click here to read the complete article
By Nikki Riggsbee
Basenjis are an ancient breed from central Africa, based on DNA, cave art, and pyramid art. When discovered by Europeans, they were described as a small bark-less dog, with short yellow-tan hair, large erect ears, and a short, curled tail. The Basenji is still used in central Africa as a hunting dog.
Basenjis were imported to England and later to the United States and were officially recognized by AKC in 1944. In the late 1980s and early ‘90s, several American Basenji breeders traveled to central Africa and brought home some Basenjis as part of the African Stock Project to introduce new dogs. Not many breeds have the opportunity to do that – to return and have access to foundation stock working at original jobs.
We invited nineteen Basenji breeder-judges to take a survey on their breed’s priorities, and nineteen agreed to participate. Eleven completed surveys were received. More input would have been good, but typically relative priorities stay fairly consistent with ten to fifteen participants.
The Basenji survey results didn’t show consistent agreement on how important features were. Many virtues and faults were ranked differently on different surveys. Many had skewed distributions, with one group ranking a feature much more important or serious than another group did. Still, the ranked lists had the priorities in approximately the same sequence as I have heard from breed mentors.
The participating breeder-judges averaged nearly thirty-six years involvement in the breed and more than eleven years judging the breed. Half have judged their national specialty, and all have judged Basenji specialties.
Basenji Virtues
Click here to read the complete article
Short URL: https://caninechronicle.com/?p=206491
Posted by Jane Alston-Myers
on Jul 17 2021. Filed under Current Articles, Featured.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Comments are closed
