Meet Baccarat's brother

Bracken de Trevira

Born July 10, 2006

of Rapide de Trevira and My Boy de Saint Urbain

Oh, this is far from gardens, home renovations and saving the USA and the world one vote at a time, but I was so excited to see this picture! The breeder was thoughtful enough to send it on to me, having received it from the owners of Bracken, whose family name indicates Scottish lineage. Appropriate, since Rapide descends from an international grand champion of Scottish lineage, Donalbain Macduff, shown at right. My own father's family is Scottish, coming from near Edinburgh. I must still have family in Peebles and Edinburgh.

Donalbain Macduff is Rapide's great grand-sire on both her maternal and paternal side, through Irish Coffee de Trevira, born 1993, and Magic Boy de Trevira, her sire, who traces back to the superb Mardas Labradors Mardas Marine of Sh. Ch. Mardas Master Mariner and Mardas Mulled Wine, whose own paternal grand-sire was Mardas Master Mariner and maternal grand-sire was Mardas Samoori, half-brothers who are pictured together below in 1993.
Irish Coffee's (pictured below) dame is Fanfare de Bercail Bacot, a chocolate lab, who traces her roots back to the Cookridge Chocolate Labradors.

According to the website of Lorken Farms Labrador Retrievers in Fremont, Wisconsin, "In the late 1930's Chocolate Labradors were known to be at two kennels: Tibshelfs & Cookridge." Go to Fanfare du Bercail Bacot's pedigree, click back up through her bloodlines, and you will find yourself looking at her Cookridge bloodlines.

Rapide's paternal grand-dame, Hello Dolly de Trevira is of Mardas Marine of Sh. Ch. Mardas Master Mariner, pictured below left.

His brother, Mardas Maroon (pictured below), another international show champion, figures in the bloodlines of Baccarat on her sire's side. I have misplaced her pedigree papers. Heaven only knows where. Last I saw them, they were in her pouch of identification, registration and veterinary papers.

Something more for which I will have to have go hunting. Wish she could help me with that nose.

What interests me is to note the two head types. There is the shorter head of Irish Coffee and Mardas Marine, which is more like Rapide and Bracken's, where Baccarat resembles more closely Donalbain Macduff, and the half-brothers Mardas Master Mariner and Mardas Samoori.

Baccarat had another brother, also a chocolate. I believe there was a fourth. The chocolates go for a third again the price of the blacks because they are rarer, occurring less frequently, but they are harder to show, since their coats are at their best only a fraction of the year. Three months, according to Marlene Hepper of Mardas Labradors. A Black Lab can give birth to all three color Labradors, but many breeders will breed for Black and Chocolate Labs only. Rapide produced only blacks and chocolates.

There is almost no way to choose from amongst all the pictures I have taken of my own two girls, Rapide (2000) and her Baccarat (2006), but I shall try. To the left and to the right below are Baccarat in May of this year, and farther below is Rapide, photographed in September and October 2007.


























































And here they are together, it never ceases to enthrall us to watch them with one another.

Audouin, who didn't want any dogs at all, but broke down to offer me Baccarat for my birthday two years ago, was the one who said yes when her breeder, Colette Legrand of Les Labradors de Trévira in Pierrefitte-en-Auge, between Lisieux and Deauville in Normandy, asked us if we would like to take her mother, who she was retiring at 6 1/2.

It made him sad to think of all the puppies she had seen taken from her, and she would live the rest of her life with one of her last ones, her little girl, Baccarat, shown here in April with her head resting on Rapide's haunches.
















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