We have already discussed that puppy training methodology, objectives and goals are dependant on many variables. You are already familiar with the importance of the puppy’s temperament and characteristic traits for selecting a training module. The breed that you have selected is another important factor that determines the training module.

Tips for Selecting a Puppy
You should select a puppy depending upon the purpose for which you would like to have one. The subject matter of this book is not to provide insights for selecting a puppy. However, this information is pertinent and it is better to have an overview of the factors that you must consider before selecting a puppy for your home. 

Selection of a puppy should never be on the grounds of the popularity of a particular breed or fashion. Puppies are living beings and require proper care, training and grooming. Moreover, puppies are very friendly and soon acquire the status of a family member and a friend. A faulty selection is harmful not only for the puppy’s health and wellness but can cause an emotionally shattering event for you as well.

When you select a puppy that is not appropriate for your personality, home and environment, she may develop undesirable behavior patterns. Discrepancies in expectations and reality are a major reason why many puppies and dogs end up in dog shelters.

You should analyze why you want a puppy. Some of the possible reasons for owning a puppy are companionship, a playmate for your children, guarding your house or property, hunting, participation in dog shows or simple love for dogs. Certain dog breeds like Boxers and Dachshunds are excellent companions.

However, if you are selecting a puppy as playmate for your children you can choose from small breeds like Maltese, Pekingese, or Papillion. Great Danes and German Shepherds are good for hunting and guarding purposes.

Health and temperament of the puppy is another important selection criteria. Before adopting the puppy, ensure that you have selected an ethical and scrupulous puppy breeder. Many of the puppies from pet shops are from “Puppy Mills”. These puppy mills have little or no consideration for the puppy’s health and betterment of the breed. They are just interested in their profits and they indulge in breeding practices that are not safe for puppy and the parent dog’s health.  

It is always better to select a puppy after examining the puppy as part of the litter and as an individual puppy. When you observe the puppy as a part of the litter you are able to find out whether the litter suffers from some genetically inherited traits like shyness, fear or aggression.

The puppy that has inherent shyness or fear has very rare chances of overcoming these traits. Therefore, careful examination before selection can make your job of puppy training much simpler.

What you want Your Dog to be
Purpose of adoption helps not only in selection but also for deciding the appropriate training program for a puppy. For example, training requirements for a puppy that will be a companion for older people at home will be entirely different from that of a hunting or guarding dog.

The puppy that will be a companion for older people and is more useful for indoor purposes will require training in retrieving and handing over objects and commands like long stay. However, the dogs for hunting and guarding purposes require agility and aggressiveness training. Similarly, the training goals and objectives for show dogs are different from those who will be the playmates of small children.

Show dogs require acrobatic and tricks training whereas the primary training objective for play dogs is biting control and playful tricks like begging, retrieving the ball and shaking hands.  

Importance of Puppy’s Environment
Other factors that determine the selection and training are size of your home, personality, age and physical condition of the caregiver, grooming requirements, activity level and age of pet owner, time that u can be spared for training, and where you would like to house the puppy or dog. Some other factors that are vital for selecting a puppy are the sex of puppy and how particular you are about selecting a pure breed.

High energy and active dogs tend to get bored if you confine them in small apartments. If you live in small apartment and have little or no open space, you should avoid adopting breeds like Boxer because they are very active and high-energy dogs. High-energy breeds require agility and active training programs. These puppies are not suitable for owners that are older and lead a sedentary lifestyle.

Training and playing are necessary requirements for providing a vent for abundant energies of these active puppies. Training requirements for puppies’ that will live in kennels outside the house are different from the training program for puppies that will live in apartments.

Importance of your Puppy’s Gender
Training program of your puppy also depends upon her gender. There are no conclusive studies to prove that a male or female puppy has particular advantages or disadvantages regarding training. However, there are puppy lovers who would swear by the advantages of having a female or a male puppy.

Puppy training experts believe that female puppies are easy to train because of their sweet and amiable nature and they are less prone to distractions. However, some puppy trainers believe that training male puppies is fun because of their sharp intellect and better grasping power.

Based on the previously mentioned factors and your purpose for adopting a puppy, you can finalize your training goals and objectives. You must establish long-term as well as short-term puppy training goals. The long-term training goal can be to make your puppy a well-behaved and loving companion.

A short-term training goal can be training your puppy to sit on command or come when called. Here again, the long-term training goal for a play puppy is making her friendly and sociable and the training goal for a hunting or guarding puppy is to make her aggressive and agile.

The Basset was not familiarly known to British sportsmen before 1863, in which year specimens of the breed were seen at the first exhibition of dogs held in Paris, and caused general curiosity and admiration among English visitors. In France, however, this hound has been used for generations, much as we use our Spaniel, as a finder of game in covert, and it has long been a popular sporting dog in Russia and Germany. In early times it was chiefly to be found in Artois and Flanders, where it is supposed to have had its origin; but the home of the better type of Basset is now chiefly in La Vendee, in which department some remarkably fine strains have been produced.

There are three main strains of the French Basset—the Lane, the Couteulx, and the Griffon. The Griffon Basset is a hound with a hard bristly coat, and short, crooked legs. It has never found great favour here.

The Lane hounds are derived from the kennels of M. Lane, of Franqueville, Baos, Seine-Inferieure, and are also very little appreciated in this country. They are a lemon and white variety, with torse or bent legs. The Couteulx hounds were a type bred up into a strain by Comte le Couteulx de Canteleu.

They were tricolour, with straight, short legs, of sounder constitution than other strains, with the make generally of a more agile hound, and in the pedigree of the best Bassets owned in this country fifteen years ago, when the breed was in considerable demand, Comte de Couteulx’s strain was prominent and always sought for.

With careful selection and judicious breeding we have now produced a beautiful hound of fine smooth coat, and a rich admixture of markings, with a head of noble character and the best of legs and feet. Their short, twinkling legs make our Bassets more suitable for covert hunting than for hunting hares in the open, to which latter purpose they have frequently been adapted with some success. Their note is resonant, with wonderful power for so small a dog, and in tone it resembles the voice of the Bloodhound.

The Basset-hound is usually very good tempered and not inclined to be quarrelsome with his kennel mates; but he is wilful, and loves to roam apart in search of game, and is not very amenable to discipline when alone. On the other hand, he works admirably with his companions in the pack, when he is most painstaking and indefatigable. Endowed with remarkable powers of scent, he will hunt a drag with keen intelligence.

There are now several packs of Bassets kept in England, and they show very fair sport after the hares; but it is not their natural vocation, and their massive build is against the possibility of their becoming popular as harriers. The general custom is to follow them on foot, although occasionally some sportsmen use ponies.

Their pace, however, hardly warrants the latter expedient. On the Continent, where big game is more common than with us, the employment of the Basset is varied. He is a valuable help in the tracking of boar, wolf, and deer, and he is also frequently engaged in the lighter pastimes of pheasant and partridge shooting.

The Earl of Onslow and the late Sir John Everett Millais were among the earliest importers of the breed into England. They both had recourse to the kennels of Count Couteulx. Sir John Millais’ Model was the first Basset-hound exhibited at an English dog show, at Wolverhampton in 1875. Later owners and breeders of prominence were Mr. G. Krehl, Mrs. Stokes, Mrs. C. C. Ellis and Mrs. Mabel Tottie.

As with most imported breeds, the Basset-hound when first exhibited was required to undergo a probationary period as a foreign dog in the variety class at the principal shows. It was not until 1880 that a class was provided for it by the Kennel Club.

It is to be regretted that owners of this beautiful hound are not more numerous. Admirable specimens are still to be seen at the leading exhibitions, but the breed is greatly in need of encouragement.

At the present time the smooth dog hound taking the foremost place in the estimate of our most capable judges is Mr. W. W. M. White’s Ch.  Loo-Loo-Loo, bred by Mrs. Tottie, by Ch. Louis Le Beau out of Sibella.

Mr. Croxton Smith’s Waverer is also a dog of remarkably fine type.  Among bitch hounds Sandringham Dido, the favourite of Her Majesty the Queen, ranks as the most perfect of her kind.

The rough or Griffon-Basset, introduced into England at a later date than the smooth, has failed for some reason to receive great attention. In type it resembles the shaggy Otterhound, and as at present favoured it is larger and higher on the leg than the smooth variety.

Their colouring is less distinct, and they seem generally to be lemon and white, grey and sandy red. Their note is not so rich as that of the smooth variety. In France the rough and the smooth Bassets are not regarded as of the same race, but here some breeders have crossed the two varieties, with indifferent consequences.

Some beautiful specimens of the rough Basset have from time to time been sent to exhibition from the Sandringham kennels. His Majesty the King has always given affectionate attention to this breed, and has taken several first prizes at the leading shows, latterly with Sandringham Bobs, bred in the home kennels by Sandringham Babil ex Saracenesca.

Perhaps the most explicit description of the perfect Basset-hound is still that compiled twenty-five years ago by Sir John Millais.  It is at least sufficiently comprehensive and exact to serve as a guide:

The Basset, for its size, has more bone, perhaps, than nearly any other dog.

Skull - should be peaked like that of the Bloodhound, with the same dignity and expression, the nose black (although some of my own have white about theirs), and well flewed. For the size of the hound I think the teeth are extremely small. However, as they are not intended to destroy life, this is probably the reason.

Ears - should hang like the Bloodhound’s, and are like the softest velvet drapery.

Eyes - are a deep brown, and are brimful of affection and intelligence. They are pretty deeply set, and should show a considerable haw. A Basset is one of those hounds incapable of having a wicked eye.

Neck - is long, but of great power; and in the _Basset a jambes torses_ the flews extend very nearly down to the chest. The chest is more expansive than even in the Bulldog, and should in the _Bassets a jambes torses_ be not more than two inches from the ground. In the case of the Bassets a jambes demi-torses and jambes droites, being generally lighter, their chests do not, of course, come so low.

Shoulders - are of great power, and terminate in the crooked feet of the Basset, which appear to be a mass of joints. The back and ribs are strong, and the former of great length.

Stern - is carried gaily, like that of hounds in general, and when the hound is on the scent of game this portion of his body gets extremely animated, and tells me, in my own hounds, when they have struck a fresh or a cold scent, and I even know when the foremost hound will give tongue.

Hind-quarters - are very strong and muscular, the muscles standing rigidly out down to the hocks.

Skin - is soft in the smooth haired dogs, and like that of any other hound, but in the rough variety it is like that of the Otterhound’s.

Colour - of course, is a matter of fancy, although I infinitely prefer the tricolour, which has a tan head and a black and white body.

For the last few years the popularity of this smaller sized branch of the Spaniel tribe has been steadily increasing, and the Cocker classes at most of the best shows are now remarkable both for the number of entries and the very high standard of excellence to which they attain.

A short time ago black Cockers were decidedly more fashionable than their parti-coloured relatives, but now the reverse is the case, and the various roans and tricolours have overtaken and passed the others, both in general quality and in the public esteem. The reason for this popularity of the breed as a whole is not far to seek. The affectionate and merry disposition of the Cocker and his small size compared with that of the other breeds pre-eminently fit him for a companion in the house as well as in the field, and he ranks among his admirers quite as many of the fairer sex as he does men a fact which is not without a certain element of danger, since it should never be lost sight of that the breed is a sporting one, which should on no account be allowed to degenerate into a race of mere house companions or toys.

Small-sized Spaniels, usually called Cockers, from their being more especially used in woodcock shooting, have been indigenous to Wales and Devonshire for many years, and it is most likely from one or both of these sources that the modern type has been evolved. It is probable too that the type in favour to day, of a short coupled, rather “cobby” dog, fairly high on the leg, is more like that of these old fashioned Cockers than that which obtained a decade or two ago, when they were scarcely recognised as a separate breed, and the Spaniel classes were usually divided into “Field Spaniels over 25 lb.” and “Field Spaniels under 25 lb.” In those days a large proportion of the prizes fell to miniature Field Spaniels. The breed was not given official recognition on the Kennel Club’s register till 1893, nor a section to itself in the Stud Book; and up to that date the only real qualification a dog required to be enabled to compete as a Cocker was that he should be under the weight of 25 lb., a limit arbitrarily and somewhat irrationally fixed, since in the case of an animal just on the border line he might very well have been a Cocker before and a Field Spaniel after breakfast.

It is not easy to find authentic pedigrees going back further than a quarter of a century, but Mr. C. A. Phillips can trace his own strain back to 1860, and Mr. James Farrow was exhibiting successfully thirty five years ago. The former gentleman published the pedigree of his bitch Rivington Dora for eighteen generations in extenso in The Sporting Spaniel; while the famous Obo strain of the latter may be said to have exercised more influence than any other on the black variety both in this country and in the United States.

It was in 1880 that the most famous of all the “pillars” of the Cocker stud, Mr. James Farrow’s Obo, made his first bow to the public, he and his litter sister Sally having been born the year before. He won the highest honours that the show bench can give, and the importance of his service to the breed both in his owner’s kennel and outside it, can scarcely be over-estimated. Nearly all of the best blacks, and many of the best coloured Cockers, are descended from him.

At this period the type mostly favoured was that of a dog rather longer in the body and lower on the leg than it is at present, but the Obo family marked a progressive step, and very rightly kept on winning under all the best judges for many years, their owner being far too good a judge himself ever to exhibit anything but first-class specimens.

Meanwhile, although the blacks were far the most fashionable and it was said that it was hopeless to try to get the same quality in coloured specimens several enthusiastic breeders for colour were quietly at work, quite undismayed by the predilection shown by most exhibitors and judges for the former colour. Among them was Mr. C.  A. Phillips, whose two bitches from Mr. James Freme, of Wepre Hall, Flintshire, succeeded in breeding from one of them, whom he named Rivington Sloe, the celebrated dog Rivington Signal, who, mated with Rivington Blossom, produced Rivington Bloom, who was in turn the dam of Rivington Redcoat. These dogs proved almost, if not quite, as valuable to the coloured variety as Obo did to the blacks, and formed the foundation of Mr. J. M. Porter’s celebrated Braeside strain which afterwards became so famous.

During the last few years Mr. R. de Courcy Peele’s kennel has easily held the pride of place in this variety. Most readers are no doubt familiar with the many beautiful Cockers which have appeared in the show ring and carried off so many prizes under the distinguishing affix Bowdler. His kennel was built up on a Braeside foundation, and has contained at one time or other such flyers as Ben Bowdler, Bob Bowdler, Rufus Bowdler, Dixon Bowdler, Eva Bowdler, Mary Bowdler, Blue-coat Bowdler, Susan Bowdler, and others, and Ben and Bob have also been, as sires, responsible for the success of a good many dogs hailing from other kennels.

He has also been fairly successful with blacks, which, however, have usually been purchased and not bred by him, the two best being Master Reuben, bred by Miss Joan Godfrey, and Jetsam Bowdler, a bitch who has distinguished herself both in the ring and in the field.

Coloured Cockers are certainly “booming” just now, and as a consequence the blacks, who are equally worthy of support, are being rather neglected. Certainly it is the case that whereas one sees at most shows big classes of the former filled with a good level lot with hardly a bad specimen amongst them, the classes devoted to the latter, besides not being so well filled, are much more uneven, and always contain a large proportion of weeds and toys. A few years ago the black classes were immeasurably superior to the coloured, and it is to be hoped that in the near future they will regain at least a position of equality with them.

At the last few Field Trial meetings the Spaniel Club has provided classes confined to Cockers, which have filled fairly well, and enabled the small breed to demonstrate that it can in its way be quite as useful as its larger cousins.

A Cocker can very often go and work as well where a larger Spaniel cannot even creep, and for working really thick hedgerows or gorse has no superior. There seems to be every prospect of a brilliant future, and increased popularity for this charming breed.

Its interests are looked after both by the Spaniel Club and the comparatively newly formed Cocker Spaniel Club, and it is also quite as much in favour on the other side of the Atlantic as it is in the United Kingdom. Indeed, the classes in America and Canada compare very favourably with our own.

The descriptive particulars of the breed are:

HEAD — Not so heavy in proportion and not so high in occiput as in the modern Field Spaniel, with a nicely developed muzzle or jaw; lean, but not snipy, and yet not so square as in the Clumber or Sussex varieties, but always exhibiting a sufficiently wide and well-developed nose. Forehead perfectly smooth, rising without a too decided stop from muzzle into a comparatively wide and rounded, well-developed skull, with plenty of room for brain power.

EYES — Full, but not prominent, hazel or brown coloured, with a general expression of intelligence and gentleness, though decidedly wideawake, bright and merry, never goggled nor weak as in the King Charles and Blenheim kinds.

EARS — Lobular, set on low, leather fine and not exceeding beyond the nose, well clothed with long silky hair, which must be straight or wavy—no positive curls or ringlets.

NECK — Strong and muscular, and neatly set on to fine sloping shoulders.

BODY (INCLUDING SIZE AND SYMMETRY) - Not quite so long and low as in the other breeds of Spaniels, more compact and firmly knit together, giving the impression of a concentration of power and untiring activity. 

WEIGHT — The weight of a Cocker Spaniel of either sex should not exceed 25 lb., or be less than 20 lb. Any variation either way should be penalised.

NOSE — Sufficiently wide and well developed to ensure the exquisite scenting powers of this breed.

SHOULDERS AND CHEST — The former sloping and fine, chest deep and well developed, but not too wide and round to interfere with the free action of the fore-legs. 

BACK AND LOIN — Immensely strong and compact in proportion to the size and weight of the dog; slightly sloping towards the tail.

HIND-QUARTERS — Wide, well rounded, and very muscular, so as to ensure untiring action and propelling power under the most trying circumstances of a long day, bad weather, rough ground, and dense covert.

STERN — That most characteristic of blue blood in all the Spaniel family may, in the lighter and more active Cocker, although set low down, be allowed a slightly higher carriage than in the other breeds, but never cocked up over, but rather in a line with the back, though the lower its carriage and action the better, and when at work its action should be incessant in this, the brightest and merriest of the whole Spaniel family.

FEET AND LEGS — The legs should be well boned, feathered and straight, for the tremendous exertions expected from this grand little sporting dog, and should be sufficiently short for concentrated power, but not too short as to interfere with its full activity. Feet firm, round, and cat-like, not too large, spreading, and loose jointed. This distinct breed of Spaniel does not follow exactly on the lines of the larger Field Spaniel, either in lengthiness, lowness, or otherwise, but is shorter in the back, and rather higher on the legs.
 
COAT — Flat or waved, and silky in texture, never wiry, woolly, or curly, with sufficient feather of the right sort, viz., waved or Setter-like, but not too profuse and never curly.

GENERAL APPEARANCE — Confirmatory of all indicated above, viz., a concentration of pure blood and type, sagacity, docility, good temper, affection, and activity.