BOLOGCOS AT SUWANNEE

AVAILABLE PUPPIES
Updated July 20th, 2008

We have two black masked wild sable pups available, and they will be ready to go to their new homes on August 14th, at 8 weeks old. We are also expecting two more litters in mid-August, that will be ready in mid-October.

So if you are interested either of these two wild sable puppies please contact us at the email address below. Or if you are interested in being notified about future Bologco litters, we will put your name on our litter notification list. All you have to do is write to us at

suwannee.cockers@gmail.com

and ask to be on the list. But we would appreciate your telling us a bit about your home and your experience with dogs.

Also please note that we do NOT sell dogs on the internet, but merely advertise there, and all puppy sales are done in person, after much email and phone contact with our prospective puppy buyers. And we do not ship puppies, so please do not ask, as it is simply not possible for us at this point, and all puppies must be picked up in Cross City, Florida. All of our puppies come with a health certificate from our vet, and we have vet and buyer references.

And all we really ask from our puppy buyers is that they treat the dog as a beloved house pet and abide by the terms of our dog contract, which can be read on the contract page on this website.

Black Masked Wild Sable Girl

This adorable black masked, wild sable girl is shown at about four weeks old, and her undercoat will probably turn silvery-gray eventually. She has a thin white stripe from the tip of her chin, down her neck to her belly, and four white feet, but these white areas should grow smaller as she grows larger. She will be available on August 14th, when she turns 8 weeks old, and she is $500.

This girl will keep her very dark face and ears, but should have a quite lighter undercoat grow out as she gets older, with darker tips on some of her hairs, mainly along her back.

The above picture shows her almost silver undercoat on her side, when her hair is pulled back.

This girl has only been up on her feet for about a week now, but she can scamper pretty fast alrerady.

This cute little girl has very striking markings.

Black Masked Wild Sable Boy

This striking looking black masked, wild sable boy is also shown at about four weeks old, but he already has a much redder undercoat than the girl does. But he has the same white markings as the girl, and he will be available on August 14th, and is $400.

This boy is really very richly colored, and like the wild sable girl, will keep his dark ear tips and mask, while his white areas shrink as he grows.

And this boy is pretty fast on his feet too!

This boy's undercoat is a darker color--more of a red--than the wild sable girl's much ligher undercoat.

This boy is adorable.

If you are interested in either of these puppies please contact us at:

Suwannee.Cockers@Gmail.com

About Our Bologcos

All of Guido's puppies have similar body types, with longer bodies and shorter legs, and their muzzles are a decent length, and not smushed at all. We do not like smushed muzzles, as dogs like this almost always have breathing and snoring problems. All of their tails curl back over their bodies, and they all have quite a bit of coat that seems to have some curl in it, but we do not believe that any of our Bologcos will ever have an actual corded coat like their sire. But we do know that curly hair is dominant over straight hair, but probably in a polygenic manner, involving many genes. So we do expect at least wavy coats on all of these puppies.

Bologcos are not toy dogs, and the girls should range in the 12 to 15 pounds range, and the boys 14 to 18 pounds. But these are just our "guestimates" from our experience raising puppies, and sometimes puppies will surprise us and turn out to be either smaller or larger than we expected. We think that these puppies are some of the most adorable puppies that we have ever seen, and we fervently hope that the people that buy them will send us lots and lots of pictures as they grow up to showcase on this website.

We wanted to begin breeding mixed litters because we are endeavoring to produce a very healthy, very well tempered, and very cute, smaller pet dog that will weight under 20 pounds, so that they will be able to live more easily in the smaller homes and condos, with little or no yards, that are so prevalent in urban and even suburban Florida. But we are not interested in producing very small toy dogs, as quite small toy dogs are not very well suited as family dogs, as they are too fragile for even older children to play with.

We also wanted to produce an adorable pet dog that was small enough to travel with its owner inside of an airplane, and that would have great hybrid vigor--also called heterosis--and thus be generally healthier than either breed that it came from, due to having a much wider genepool to draw from than is possible in any purebred breed. And we think that is it quite likely that our Bologco litters are the first time in as much as 500 years that the Spaniel lines have been crossed with these particular Bichon lines.

Thus our Bologco puppies are extremely vigorous, right from birth, and they need absolutely no assitance in beginning to nurse. The picture to the left shows a very sturdy light colored girl at a few days old, and our vet has recently commented on how sleek and sturdy our newborns look. We were very surprised at how strong our little five ounce Bologco puppies were at birth, and we attribute this newborn strength to hybrid vigor.

Nature likes large gene pools for health and survival of offspring, so we have practiced "positive assortive breeding" with our pet Cocker lines for years, avoiding any inbreeding, and all of our Cockers have very diverse pedigrees and are extremely healthy.

And fortunately for our designer dog plans, we did have smaller genes in our purebred Cockers to start out with, as we had been breeding smaller Cockers for several generations--generally in the 14 to 20 pound range--whereas a standard sized Cocker is in the 23 to 28 pound range--so we knew that we had the genetics for a smaller type of dog already in our Cockers. And we also wanted to produce a shorter legged mix that would not be capable of jumping onto furniture or table tops in the first place, where its presence wasn't wanted, as we have have owned lots of very agile, counter surfing Cockers!

We also knew that we loved the look of old time smaller Spaniels that we had seen in many antique European paintings, with their colorful markings and plumed tails, and several of our small Cocker girls have this old fashioned look to them, and our younger Cocker girls have their intact tails. But we also like the "Teddy Bear" look of the many Bichon/Maltese mixes that have been so popular as designer dogs over the past few years. So our Bologcos are a "Teddy Bear" type of mix, but with the longer Spaniel ears.

So once we had finally decided on the Bologco mix for our first foray into designer dogs, looking to create a combination small Spaniel/Teddy Bear look, we then went in search of our Guido. And once we had a Bologco litter, the American Canine Hybrid Club accepted our naming of the mix, and we are the origators of this adorable designer mix. And we are extremely happy with the results, as we got the qualities that we thought would be dominant in our puppies--the very long, Spaniel type ears and the longer, more pointed nose, with a good scissor bite--as we did not want a "squashed nose" look that would cause the dog breathing problems as an adult.

And both the Bichon Bolognese and American Cocker breed standards call for a scissor type bite, so there is no conflict in the mouth of these Bologco puppies. And we wanted a longer body in porportion to shorter legs, and either a curly or wavy coat with LOTS of hair for that "fluff-ball" look--hopefully non-shedding--and also hopefully more of a hypo allergenic coat than the more typical dog's coat. The Bolognese coat is considered to be "flocked"--not curled--and flocked dog coats are considered to be made of hair--not fur--and thus are also considered to be hypoallergenic. And these Bologco puppies' coat do not shed, and we have to cut their hair, just like our own.

Right now we have no plans to go further than an F1 hybrid cross between two purebreds, and for the next year or so we will be breeding our Guido with several of our smaller Cocker girls, who all have different colors and markings, and we will wait and see if we get consistent color and markings results, or if Guido has some more surprises in store for us.

Our Visitor Policy

At the present time our kennel is closed to all visitors, due to the prevalence of several different dog diseases here in Florida. There is rampant distemper in the Gainesville area, and this University of Florida Vet School webpage about distemper in Gainesville has more information. Unfortunately the almost 70,000 college students residing in Gainesville are often not responsible pet keepers, and many of their animals are not spayed or neutered, and are not even vaccinated, and many pets are simply abandoned at the end of the school year. And it is estimated that there are about 40,000 feral cats living in Gaineville, which is less than 50 miles away from us.

And there is a new variant of parvo which started in Italy about eight years ago that has now spread all over the US, and unfortunately not all of the puppy multi shots are effective against this new parvo strain. So we special order Neopar shots, having them delivered on ice to us via UPS, and NeoPar was developed by Dr. Bob Page, who is one of the original researchers in developing parvo vaccines. NeoPar is guaranteed against all known variant strains of parvo in the world.

And all of Florida is still plagued by the canine influenza virus, which got its start in the large racing greyhound breeding kennels here in North Florida several years ago, and this virus has now spread all across the country, killing thousands of dogs, and there is no vaccine against this virus. The canine influenza virus has been estimated to be up to 10% fatal in pet dogs, but about 50% fatal in kennels, and we know of whole kennels in our area that have been virtually wiped out by this virus, especially back in 2004, when this virus first appeared in our area and our local vets had absolutely no idea about what they were dealing with.

And we have learned that a Las Vegas shelter recently killed over 1,000 dogs in their care, whether they showed symptoms or not, in order to try to stop the spread of this virus out into the community, and to also try to disinfect their facility. And in July of 2008 the animal shelter in Ocala, Florida had to close for a number of days in order to disinfect their facility--and in the process put down over 80 animals--due to the large number of diseases within their shelter. So obviously these shelters thought that there was a danger to their communities from these various diseases, to go to that extreme. And from what we personally know about the effects of the canine influenza virus on local private dog kennels, this virus is more deadly than the general public is being lead to believe, especially in places--like our kennel--where a group of dogs live closely together.

And we have also learned that in early February of 2008 a new disease emerged in shelters in the Miami/Dade area which kills dogs within 24 hours, and they die in a pool of blood, and shelter workers are calling this new disease "canine ebola".

Unfortunately due to the vegan-based, animal rights crusade against US responsible breeders, creating a shortage of puppies and smaller dogs here in the US, there are now many puppies being imported from huge commercial breeding facilities in both Mexico and South America. And some private shelters are even importing dogs from the Caribbean islands when they run out of small dogs and puppies, rather than making greater efforts to place less desirable older and larger dogs, or even closing their facilities when they have no more shelter/rescue dogs to sell. So it is entirely possible that this is a new disease that has been recently brought into the Miami area from off-shore, and apparently this new disease is already rapidly spreading northward, as it has also been very recently found in Lee County, Florida shelters on the Gulf Coast.

And these germs and viruses can be carried on hands, clothing, shoes--and even on car tires. So for the protection of the dogs in our kennel we do deliver puppies to new owners at a convenient meeting place, usually in Cross City, Florida. We have both buyer and vet references, and we do endeavor to produce the healthiest puppies possible, and part of that effort requires that we protect our dogs from all known and emerging dog diseases. We hate to have to talk about these awful dog diseases when advertising our puppies, but we can't emphasize enough how dangerous some of these diseases are to kennels, and that this is why we can no longer open our kennel to visitors.

Cross City is located on US Hwy 19, approximately 50 miles due West of Gainesville, and about 150 miles due North of the Tampa Bay area, and is only 15 miles back from the Gulf Coast. And coming to Cross City from Central and South Florida is a straight drive up I-75, turning West at Ocala onto a scenic, four-lane drive, first through the rolling hills of Marion County's horse country, and then through the Pure Water Wilderness area of Florida.

Copyright 2007-2008 - Suwannee Cockers - All Rights Reserved

suwannee.cockers@gmail.com