[Dailydrool] Basset behavior and health issues

[Deb Good]

Just wanted to comment on a couple of recent threads.  As for issues that a dog might not show right away, I think that perhaps dogs, like people, will behave differently in different environments.  (My own 2-leggers behave so much better at my parents house than they do here!).  I have dog-sat for friends on numerous occasions and their dogs behave quite differently in my house than at their own homes.  One in particular, a Basset, is a known "couch potato" in other environments, but at my house does the Basset 500 non-stop and acts like she has Attention Deficit Disorder.  Another, also a Basset, will howl at the drop of a hat at home, but here I couldn't make him howl if my life depended on it!  And another dog I know of doesn't like any other dogs of any breed, but will play and sleep and eat and get along just fine with my Sean and has been a re-current houseguest here because of it.

As for health issues in Bassets, well, all breeds have their issues and within each breed there are individual variances.  My first Basset, Pippi (atb) had stomach problems about every 4 months for the last 2 years of her young life.  Sean and Ana the current residents, haven't had much trouble unless you count the time I switched food too quickly and we had a bad case of the "runs".  What you need to remember is that there are several thousand members on this list and many of us have multiple dogs so you aren't really seeing the whole picture so to speak.  Also remember that Bassets like to ingest a lot of stuff that quite frankly isn't really edible which can cause digestive issues too.  

Deb