Fall 2017  Saber Tails 67    

Petit Basset Griffon Vendéen Club of America

Meet Our members

With each quarterly edition of Saber Tail, we want to introduce members of our club.  We have prepared a set of ques-

tions for each person to answer to help members get to know other PBGV lovers.  Our membership is comprised of such 

unique people from all over the world with a wide variety of experiences.  But...we all have ONE thing in common - We 

LOVE Our PBGVs!  This month, in addition to an introdution to the Member of the Health Committee, meet Juliet Fran-

zen.

Since our first PBGV, Monique, came to live with 

us in 2004, we cannot imagine  life without 

one.  Monique was 6 years old and it was love 

at first sight.   When we went to see Monique, 

a litter had been born the night before and 

Carole Edison, the breeder, insisted that we re-

ally needed to take a puppy too.  Of course the 

puppies were adorable but we had never had a 

puppy and said no.  Once home with Monique, 

we kept wrestling with the idea of getting a 

puppy and finally decided to go back and pick 

up 8 week old Marcel. 

We had recently lost our mixed breed, Elvis.  

Getting out a book of different breeds, we de-

termined that PBGVs were the closest breed 

in appearance to our beloved hound of mixed 

heritage.  I doubt Elvis had any PBGV in him but 

being a hound, he had a similar personality to 

our PBGVs.  We could never let Elvis off leash, 

leave food unattended and, yes, he barked.  A 

computer search for “PBGV”s led us to Carole 

and our lives were changed forever.   

Robert grew up with dogs but Elvis was my first 

dog.  Because I didn’t have pets as a child, I didn’t understand why people loved animals until a feral cat adopted me 

and after that Elvis came along.  Now I adore animals and spend my days training, grooming, walking and feeding them.  

I am a retired Financial Consultant and Robert is still working as one.  We live on the Central Coast of California, eight 

miles from the beach, half way between Los Angeles and San Francisco.  Our house is on a half acre with a shop for Rob-

ert to indulge in his many hobbies of welding, woodworking and fixing up Model A and Model T Fords.  He looks forward 

to the day when he retires and can participate in his hobbies full time.  My hobbies mostly revolve around dogs.   I enjoy 

dog agility and rally obedience with all our dogs.  We have a practice agility course set up in our back yard.   We now have 

four dogs:  three PBGVs and one Australian Shepherd.  Marcel is 13, Kai, our Aussie is 11,  Caprice and Josie are four.  We 

have been members of the PBGVCA for about 12 years and have gone to several National Specialties which we enjoyed 

very much.   We participated in several of the events but the best part was seeing so many PBGVs together in one place 

and meeting others that love the breed as much as we do.  

Juliet & Robert Franzen