Do your ears hang low?
WHEN cartoonist Alex Graham was asked to create a strip about a thinking dog for the Daily Mail in 1963, the obvious choice was a basset hound. They are a ‘unique dog’, he said, after Fred Basset and his wry observations had ambled into the nation’s consciousness, with a ‘rather expressive face’.
Their Queen Anne legs, mournful eyes and ears that sweep the ground make the basset a gift to cartoonists and advertising executives alike. They are absurdly endearing; as I write, our two resident Hush Puppies, Wellington and Churchill, lie slumped across my feet, emitting the sort of rumbling, 80-decibel snore that would earn my husband a sharp dig in the ribs at 2am. Yet they merely elicit an indulgent smile.
Fellow basset slave Orlando Fraser is ‘completely blind’ to
