THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 26, 1994 TAG: 9408260580
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GUY FRIDDELL
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
A call has gone out, sort of a mournful howl across hill and dale, summoning owners of basset hounds hereabouts.
Those owners - and it is no light responsibility to tie oneself to a being as headstrong as a basset - are planning a third annual East Coast Basset Bash in Virginia Beach, Sept. 11. This comes as a surprise, if not a shock, to me.
I had no idea there'd already been two East Coast Basset Bashes. But there have, in the home of Bob Wood of Virginia Beach, with six bassets in 1992 and 12 in 1993.
But a house can hold only so many bassets - two, say - and the basseteers are going big time with a show in the exhibition hall of Holly Ridge Manor Veterinary Medical Center on Seaboard Avenue.
From responses thus far, the organizers expect 50 to 100 bassets to show up, one mayhap from as far away as Connecticut.
``Won't they fight?'' I asked Wood.
Bassets are too civilized - or lazy - to fight, he said. Mostly they just mill about, a merry-go-round gone wild, ears flapping, tongues lolling out, roguish eyes rolling.
As Wordsworth said on one occasion upon seeing daffodils all atwinkle, nodding and dancing in the breeze, a poet, or anybody, could not but be gay in such a jocund company.
For the owners, it will be a little like looking upon a moving, swirling chocolate-butterscotch-marshmallow sundae.
One wonders, when it's all over, whether they will be able to sort them out or if, as with the tigers with Little Black Sambo, they will have melted and melded.
There will be no tricks, just basic stuff: election of a king and queen - how in the name of canine common sense does one distinguish one basset from another? They are all similarly lugubrious, woeful-eyed with bowed legs as if on an old-time carpenters bench; great flapping ears that, when shaken, sound as if a covey of bobwhites is breaking out of the brush; huge heads on which to prop your foot for an evening.
Mainly the event, which begins at 4 p.m., is for bassets to socialize. Children are admitted free. Adults may donate a dollar to cover costs of putting on the bash.
For further information, call Wood at 467-3027. His dog, Louise, pictured herewith in a pensive mood, will answer the phone.
There will be a prize for the oldest and youngest bassets and mayhap for the one from farthest away. Other exceedingly nonactive events are in the making.
Wood expects the bash to do for Hampton Roads what one has done for the town of Woodville in Washington, where 300 bassets parade Main Street, with their owners bounding along the sidewalks trying to detect their individual pets amid the madding crowd.
It is a sight not to be forgotten, as will be the turnout of flap-eared hounds racing around Pungo. Mason Andrews surely will notify Money magazine of this spectacle. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Graphic
For more information about the Basset Bash, call 467-3207.
by CNB