Bassett hounds are the sweetest, most gentle pups. Belle and Pearl sounded wonderful.
My Albert was a doberman rottweiler mix, so imagine — blocky rottweiler chest on thin little doberman legs, and the most perfect Doberman wedge head, with soft flop ears.
We always joked that if he had a celebrity twin, it would have been David Hyde Pierce as Niles Crane.
Very polite, dapper and gentle. He was adorable.
(Compared to his predecessor, our rottweiler Ursa who was a Texas prom queen, she was such a prissy little lady she hated getting her feet wet and had to be carried to her potty spot when the grass was wet. She topped out at 75lbs...)
We adopted our Bassett/PBGV mix from a no kill shelter in the Catskills. The lady who established the place was a self-described Jewish girl from Brooklyn. When she was a newlywed, she was staying in a little community with her toddler son while their house was being built.
The old lady next door to her died and her relatives came and emptied the house and left her old Golden Retriever behind. The shelter lady didn’t think much of it, never having a pet herself, and it was summertime and the dog was being fed by the neighbors. The dog and her son were very friendly.
One day, her son disappears. The community went looking for him to no avail. Then the troopers were brought in. Still no sign of the toddler. Someone finally asks “where’s the dog”? Everyone went back out again, this time calling the dog’s name. Eventually they heard faint barking and followed it.
The old dog was spotted, her body pinning the baby’s body against a tree. He was fast asleep. When they picked him up, the dog collapsed with exhaustion. Just a few feet away was a steep drop into a crop of rocks.
That day the mother made it her mission to save old unwanted animals. She adopted the dog and started her shelter. It’s also where NYC police horses are retired.