New Market-Middletown Valley huntsman Ally Storer shows Widget before judge Daphne Wood, MFH / Christine Cancelli photo
New Market-Middletown Valley Widget 2014 was judged Grand Champion of Show at the Bryn Mawr Hound Show held this year at the Radnor Hunt in Malvern, Pennsylvania on May 30, 2015.
Huntsman Alasdair Storer is banking on the beautiful tri-colored Crossbred foxhound and her sister Welcome to be the foundations of important female bloodlines for this Maryland pack to build upon. As Storer’s father—an experienced breeder of hounds in England—commented, “You couldn’t ask for a better pedigree.”
Starting with Widget and Welcome, Storer plans to breed one to an Elkridge-Harford Crossbred and the other to a Millbrook Penn-Marydel. This, he hopes, will give him two strong lines of disparate gene pools to keep his breeding options open.
Widget is by Green Spring Valley Bailey 2010, an English dog hound that goes back through the first few generations to modern English bloodlines from the Duke of Beaufort and the Heythrop. Excellent hill and fell blood from College Valley and the West Percy Foxhounds appear in earlier generations.
Widget caught the attention of Judge Daphne Wood even before this year’s show. “Last year when Marty and I judged the Crossbreds at Bryn Mawr together, Widget won her class with ease,” Daphne recalls. “I was so impressed that I looked up her pedigree to find that her grand sire is the famous Duke of Beaufort’s Bailey who, prior to being given to the Toronto North York, bred ninety bitches his last season in England.
“It was gratifying to see that Jake Carle thought as much of her as we had last year. She is beautifully balanced with a particularly strong loin and gaskin that provide the power for her long ground-eating stride. She is faultless as far as I can see, which made her a worthy Grand Champion despite being up against an exceptional basset and extremely nice English dog.”
Widget’s dam is New Market-Middletown Valley Olive 2009. Former NM-MV huntsman George Harne had sent Bliss, a Howard County Iron Bridge draft to Larry Pitts at Potomac to be bred. Larry put Bliss, a Crossbred, to his American stallion hound Joseph, a grandson of the famous and prepotent Piedmont Watchman 1989. Olive and her littermates were the happy result of the Bliss–Joseph mating. “The whole O-litter was phenomenal,” says Storer.
Storer looks for Widget and Welcome to blossom in the hunting field in this, their second year. “Pedigree-wise, considering English and American bloodlines, you couldn’t get any better,” he says.
Posted June 24, 2015