[Dailydrool] The original Fred Basset

[Rebecca Louise Stanton]

 Hello droolers.  The following story was shared with an English basset hound group a couple of weeks ago.  It is such a great story, and I hope you all enjoy it.  It is as follows:
 
"In 1963 I was living with my family in Bransgore near Christchurch; my  father was a chartered surveyor and spent much of his time travelling the south  of England looking at different properties.  One day he came home and  announced that he had surveyed a house in deepest Dorset where the owners had  many animals and needed to find new homes for some of them.  Amongst these  was a feisty young basset hound called Fred and Dad was eager for us to have  him; Mum was not so keen but she kept dreaming about him so after several days  of resistance she gave in, much to the delight of us girls (then aged 11 and  9).
 Fred duly arrived and it’s safe to say that our household was never the  same again – we quickly realised that having a basset hound as part of the  family was a way of life rather than just having a dog.  He was a complete  character, preferring to drink from the cold tap in the bath upstairs rather  than his water dish; the signal was persistent barking at the bottom of the  stairs until someone escorted him up there and turned the tap on!  He also  worked on our front hedge for days with his nose and big bulk until he made a hole big enough to squeeze through – we spied on him doing this after one too  many unexplained disappearances.  He would then make his way down the hill  to the central crossroads in Bransgore by the Crown Inn pub, lie in the middle  of the road and bark at all the passing cars making detours around him.   Mum would eventually be summoned by a phone call from the pub landlord – “Mrs  Curtis, your dog’s here again!” and have to run down the road to retrieve  him.  In those days Bransgore was a small rural village with not much  traffic, otherwise Fred would have doubtless met a sorry end outside the  pub. A few months after we got him, my Auntie Barbara came to stay with her new  husband – one Mike Randall who had just taken over the editorship of the Daily  Mail.  He was enchanted with Fred and told us about a new cartoon series  which was about to be launched in the paper.  It was of course Graham’s now  famous stories based on his own basset hound but the cartoon had yet to be  named.  Mike went back to work the following Monday and announced that he  had met an amazing basset hound called Fred, therefore the new cartoon character  should be named after him.  Graham agreed and that is how Fred Basset came  to be called after our delightful dog.  Naturally we love telling this  story but quite often people think we must be making it up; I can assure you  every word is true and we’re extremely proud that our Fred Basset became famous  by proxy.  He certainly did many of the things that the cartoon dog did and  I know that all basset hound owners can strongly identify with and therefore  immensely enjoy the tales of Graham’s Fred Basset."  Becky, Morse and Pumbaa ATB         
 


   		 	   		  
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