Texangals

Well, apologies for posting after only a fair few months to say that Zoot's puppies have come and mostly gone (we kept one of them), and in the meantime, Katie has been in the show ring a few times and picked up some points which we're really happy about given that she's only just 7 months even now. To be honest, I'm way more current on the Instagram page that you see by clicking here: TexangalsTMTs In a couple of weeks' time, we'll be hitting the northbound highway for the Manchester Terrier national specialty in Kalamazoo. Katie will show in bred-by, whereas Zoot's keeper, Diego, will still be too young for anything but Beginner Puppy. I've decided to take along Granny Bonnie for a couple of fun classes like Brood Bitch and Brace, just because I'm not sure when there will next be two of Bonnie's puppy in the ring at the same show. This year, it will be Trish, co-owned with Jerri Gillean of Go West Performance Manchesters (Washington state), and...

  Zoot fooled us all and had her litter of 5 puppies in the week BEFORE Christmas, all hearty and hale at the very creditable weights between 5 and 6 ounces. All puppies are currently reserved, but we are taking applications to get on the list for the next set of puppies we hope to have in the summer.

It’s the big, big thing on Facebook right now, showing a photo of your dog with another beside it that relates to your dog’s name. I have been wary of joining in: these Facebook things are ways of data gathering, and I’m very suspicious of them. Also, you may be hard-pressed to work out most of mine! So for your viewing pleasure (or not), here is the dog name challenge for Texangals while I’m down to just the three girls.

 

The tension was so palpable at the Humble show in Texas over the weekend of the 7th and 8th of October where I had entered Bonnie, Zoot, Trish, and took Lisa along with us for her owner. Zoot, entered in Open Bitch, has been knocking on the door of her last major for ages, but on the Sunday, she finally did it. Not only did she win the WB major, she went back into the challenge round and beat the Specials for BOV, too! I was only Zoot's 2nd time to be piloted by a handler, a need arising from my having entered 4 bitches and being all on my own. Thanks to Barbara Wood for her help with the little ones while I swapped between Trish and Bonnie. Texangals Zoot Just Zoot is from the very first litter we ever bred at Texangals, and the first of Bonnie's offspring to achieve her champion status.

 Ahhhh, COVID time. The spring and summer that basically never was. We didn't completely rest on our laurels, though: we had a litter of puppies, grabbed a couple of trick dog titles, and just this past weekend, we attended our first show since March and brought home a couple of landmarks. First, let's talk about the puppies: Cooper, Aston, and Robin were born on April Fool's Day to our foundation bitch, Bonnie, and the number one OH TMT in the country, Bentley. There are a couple of other posts about this, so I won't dwell on it too long: suffice to say, Robin (now called Kyro Jett on Instagram) has gone up to his outdoorsy family in Minnesota where he spends a lot of time in a lifejacket on a boat!; Aston (now called Rudy) is the apple of his owners' eyes in the Oklahoma City area; and Cooper (unofficially nicknamed Dennis the Menace) has gone to live with his grandsire's breeder in Kentucky where he helpfully inspects fences to let Barbie know where there are...

On various Facebook groups for this breed, we're discussing ways to protect the future, and one of the ways is to communicate with each other about where the breedable dogs are, so I've made this map for the Texangals extended family. One thing that's obvious is that we have a lot of young dogs out there, which is understandable given that I'm a new breeder, my oldest litter being still under 3, and my youngest, just 7 weeks old. But you have to start somewhere, and so this is a snapshot of where neutered, spayed, and whole dogs are located throughout the country, to help other TMT breeders get in contact with me if there is a Texangal dog living near them. I suppose one could assume that we're breeding tons and tons of dogs, but given that all of North America saw a total of 162 puppies in 2019, you can see this is not about churning out dogs just for the fun of it. In fact, the trajectory is that we'll be out of our beloved black & tans in fewer th...