Bentley

This is Bentley. There's a long story about Bentley and how he was part of our little family for a short time.

I was on Facebook one day and noticed a friend's post looking for someone to take her beagle, Bentley. She just had a baby and with the baby, working a part time job, and her husband working a full time job (and going to school as well, I think) she didn't feel Bentley was getting the love and attention he deserved.

He's pretty obedient for a beagle.

Her post asked friends to let her know if anyone knew about a good home for him. He was SO beautiful, as you can tell, so I told her as long as he was AKC registered, I would be more than happy to take him. It was important he be fully AKC resistered so we could use him for breeding with our girl dogs, who are also AKC registered.

My friend never moved Bentley's registration to her name from the previous owners, even though she had owned Bentley for almost 2 years. This was required before he could be transferred to us. So while she sent away for the papers, we picked him up and brought him home.

None of my other dogs would play fetch but Bentley loved it!

Shortly after we had him home, our Leela was ready to be bred, so. . . we let Bentley do his doggy business. (Oh no, cover your eyes!)

We finally got the papers from my friend, who transferred him into her name, but there was a problem. Let me explain how the AKC works, then you will understand the problem. When you want to register a litter with the AKC (American Kennel Club) you have to list the dad and mom so they can verify they are both certified, pure breed dogs. When a male sires more than 3 litters in a year, the AKC makes you submit that dad's DNA so they can put it on file and cross-check other dogs they have on file. They do this to ensure paternity, pure blood lines, and so on. A dog is considered pure bred, and eligible for certified AKC registration, if you can prove both the mother and father are AKC certified going back 4 generations. That's a LOT of dogs!!

He has beautiful markings

A lot of Bentley's ancestry is from one breeder, and somewhere in the 4 generations, one of the dogs they said was the dad . . . wasn't the dad. They just found this out now, because the DNA rule that the AKC has. The AKC notifies the breeder one of thier dogs is not the dad to a specific litter, and ask them to submit DNA for any other male dogs that may have been the dad. If the breeder submits the DNA and is able to find out the dad, then no problem. But if they can't, then ALL the puppies of the dogs in question will have their registration changed from certified to conditional because they can't prove who the dad is.

So, although he was a certified AKC registered Beagle when he was originally registered, he is now a conditionally registered AKC Beagle. This means he is restricted from participating in some AKC show and field events, and if he sires ANY puppies he has to have his DNA submitted to the AKC (which is $40 BTW), the mom must have her DNA submitted and on file, and all the puppies sired by that male, as well. Even after you go through ALL this trouble and pay for ALL those tests, the puppies can still only be registered as conditional. Once 4 generations of paternity have been proven, the 5th generation will be registered as certified, pure breed beagles. THAT'S SO MANY BEAGLES!!

We never had him in the snow, so i don't know if he liked it or not.
It depends on the Dog, Leela and Logan like the snow, but Lola doesn't really like it.

So we decided not to keep him, because of the cost, and the fact that his puppies can't be registered as certified pure bred beagles until the 5th generation. We decided this was the best thing to do because, while we love our puppies and consider them part of our family, that's a LOT of puppies that are not helping further the breed. Because we want to breed Beagles, we decided it would be best to have Bentley in a home that was happy to keep him purely as a family pet and not intent on breeding him. Plus, when you have TWO girl dogs go into heat you have to keep them separated from 2 males to ensure you know how may be the daddy...and that's WAY more work than we were up for. I mean, we're not running a puppy mill, here.

We only had Bentley for a few months, so I thought I should tell my friend what the situation was and that we were planning to find him a new home. She offered to take him back and with this process for us. We were VERY grateful to have her help. We drove Bentley back to her home at the beginning of July. We miss his big smile and sweet personality. He slept with us several nights and it was hard to tell if it was Bentley snoring, or Dan...so funny.

He was a good sleeper!

In about 3 weeks, Leela is due with Bentley's litter. We're not going to register them with the AKC because of the cost involved and the whole conditional registration fiasco. We will be selling them for $100 to cover the cost of shots and food for the first little while. They will stay with their mother until they are 6 or 7 weeks old. I'll post some pictures of Leela now that she is showing (she is SO big!)