My first thought was to try to lease her for a litter. But with the quarantine in Sweden, it was impossible. My next thought was to try to purchase one of her pups, but I know when people export a dog, they do not let the best pup leave from a litter.And she had very few females in the litter I was looking at. So I waited. And when I saw her son's growing up.... I knew what I had to do! I fell in love with Tarras, who had the structure and working ability I was looking for.

You can see more of Tarras here

I had to check out the AKC policy of bringing in semen. Then decide if I should go for frozen semen, or chance fresh chilled. With fresh chilled, the semen can live several days, but with transporting from overseas, it could get hung up for several days with customs, or delayed flights. We went with fresh chilled semen.
You can read about the whole breeding with fresh chilled semen here

The litter resulted in two girls. I knew I was going to keep a girl, and for 49 agonizing days, we debated over which girl to keep. I loved things about both, and it was a hard decision. The decision got a lot easier when Wanda from HunterBay Curlies expressed interest in the other female. :-)
That way I could keep a close watch on how Bailey turned out, and not keep littermates....which can be a nightmare!

Wanda is a great friend of mine, and loves Bailey. Bailey is a sweet girl, who has a lot of field drive. We decided that Bailey would really do well in field training, and we both decided that for the spring and summer, that Bailey would go into *Boot Camp* with Mary Folwer, of Grace Farm's retrievers. Well, Mary fell in love with Bailey too!

Mary is the owner of Jet (CH SoftMaple's O'Dark Thirty MH WCQ CD CGC TT HOF CR-536G27M-T OFA cardiac, CERF) the first Curly Master Hunter with an AKC Championship. She talked about how the natural instinct of Bailey would mesh well with the drive of Jet. Of course this is a litter I had thought about doing down the road..... but since their two roads crossed one steamy fall night... it seemed right. As you may have noticed, Bailey is not two years old. So she can not have an OFA hip number. Since I knew the timing would be so right for a litter, but just a few months shy of her 2nd birthday, I looked into PennHip hip scoring. Penn Hip can be done when a dog is under a year, and gives a distraction index of the hips laxity. It is said (by PennHip folk) to be a better system of doing hips than OFA. I just wanted to have a hip exam done on Baily before I decided on the breeding. We also got her CERF and OFA Cardiac exam by a licensed cardiologist. those can be done before a dog is 2. The breeding was a good idea, but I was not going to compromise on genetic testing.

(I do want to mention here that PennHip was A lot more expensive than OFA Xrays were....so this was in no way a cheep way out of getting OFA done....)

The other reason I wanted this breeding to go through was that Jet is getting up there in age. This may possibly be the last natural breeding he has. I do have semen stored from him, but a natural breeding is so much better.

Now, it may seem I am concentrating on the field aspect of this litter. I am not bragging anything up to sell the litter, as they were sold before they were even born! But.... on the non-field part of the litter..... Bailey's sister Aysa was Reserve Winners Bitch at the 2004 CCRCA National Specialty.

Her brother Alphie finished his AKC Championship with 5 majors. Bailey's mom Ripple, is from the International litter, which has 8 AKC Champions in it. Bailey's grandma Bumper, is also mom of the 4 time BIS winning Rebel. And on Jet's side... he is the first AKC Champion to earn a Master Hunter title. His daughter was Winners Bitch, Best of Winners at the 2004 CCRCA National Specialty.. She is also the first liver curly to win a sporting group first. Behind Jet is Teddy. Teddy was a multi group placer who won first AKC recognized CCR National Specialty (1994) Teddy is the sire of the first female curly coated retriever in the breed's history to reach the title of Master Hunter and 2nd Master Hunter over all in the breed. He is behind Jet and Jade, and many other curlies who just love to hunt.

Since the show stuff is such a small part of a curly's life... lets move on. Bailey's sister Aysa earned her AKC Companion Dog Obed title before she was a year old. Jet has kids titled in Agility and field. One of his sons was on the cover of the fall issue of Dog Sport Magazine and was the top Curly Coated Retriever in Canada in the AAC for 2003. But the important thing is they have a lot of natural instinct, and wonderful temperaments.

I am just telling a few of my reasons for bringing Bailey to Jet. I am not trying to push this litter! There are no pups available. I Do not do a puppy diary to sell puppies. I do it to show the new puppy owners what their puppy goes through for the first weeks here at SoftMaple. These web pages are a labor of love. Love of the breed. Love of taking the time to do the litter. It is not to sell pups. I don't have puppies to make money. I loose money when I have pups. I have a job to make money...and I have to take unpaid time off from my job to take care of puppies. It sickens me to see people who have a litter to get ready cash. Since the ones that pay are the dedicated people in the breed in the long run.