With a Standard Poodle taking the title of Best In Show at this year’s Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, I started thinking about my grandmother’s line of standard poodles. I had no idea descendants of the the dogs I played with as a very little girl were living across the globe! Here is how I found out:
Have you ever thrown something up into the air, with no idea where it will land or what the outcome might be?
About 6 months ago I wrote about my grandfather’s World War II journal. There were a lot of gaps and the pages seemed to jump around out of order. I took a chance and posted a few pages in the hopes that someone might be able to give me a few more details about my grandfather’s life. What I got back was so much more surprising. I got his dog! And apparently it’s in Germany!
Well, let me rephrase that. I got an email this week from someone in Germany who owns a dog directly descended from the dogs my grandparents’ kennel in Peabody!
Hi Cat,
I just found your interesting blog-post about your grandfather George Marmer. Did you know that your grandparents were very respectable poodle breeders from 1953 to 1971 while living in, Peabody? Their dogs under the “Prankster” prefix have innumerable descendants (for one my doggie called Bubi, that’s how I came to your grandparents names while researching Bubis ancestry). They somehow made themselves immortal all over the (poodle) world….. 🙂
Kind regards from Germany, UB
I read the brief email several times… I checked the address… I was dumbfounded! I knew my grandmother bread poodles (standard poodles, not the little ones). I knew she was very well respected and I remember seeing pictures of her with her dogs holding cups and blue ribbons. I never thought I would be able to find any of the line from her dogs. I asked for pictures.
UB wrote me back:
You can find a lot of Prankster descendants on www.poodledata.org. In the “Standard poodle Database” Darius alone had more than 40 puppies registered with the AKC, let alone those that weren’t quality enough as Stud-dogs…. And there are 16 different Prankster dogs listed, 10 of them are in my dog, Bubis pedigree. So believe it or not, my guess is that of today’s purebred poodles between 70 and 80 % have Prankster genes! So you can see what I meant with “immortal”.
In almost every Standard Poodles eyes you meet on the street, there is a glimpse of your grandparents…. 🙂
All the best to you and your family, UB
I immediately jumped online to take a look. The lineage charts are a little confusing to me, as I have never traced a dogs AKC pedigree before. A few clicks and I was able to find Sugarplum, one of my grandmother’s very first poodles. No pictures, just names and numbers. Still, it’s an awfully nice piece of my family history.
How do you thank someone for reaching out and handing you a giant cookie like this? It’s my family, even if it has four legs, brown eyes and dark curly hair.
Thank you, UB!