Famous basset hounds: real dogs behind the droopy-eared icon

Part 1

Fred Basset and the rise of cartoon bassets

Fred Basset is a British comic strip about a thinking basset hound, created by Scottish cartoonist Alex Graham and first published in the Daily Mail on 8 July 1963. The Daily Mail's editor had asked Graham for a strip about a dog who thinks like a human, and Graham settled on a basset hound because he felt the breed had unusually expressive faces. At the time Graham did not actually own a dog, so after early fan mail the newspaper gave him a basset puppy of his own to help him draw the character. If you have ever tried to sketch your own dog's expressions, you can probably see why that hands-on research mattered.

The strip's popularity spilled over into real litters: within the first few years after Fred's debut, the Kennel Club reported a six-fold increase in basset hound registrations. Fred himself is shown as wry, a little snobbish, and easily cowed by more aggressive dogs, living with an unnamed middle-aged couple.

Fred Basset has run in the Daily Mail and its sister paper continuously since 1963 and has been syndicated around the world, appearing under different names such as Wurzel in Germany and Laban in Sweden. Alex Graham died in 1991, and after his stockpiled strips ran out, his daughter Arran Keith and artist Michael Martin continued the strip in his style, a partnership that has now lasted for decades. So the same fictional dog your grandparents might have read about is, technically, still appearing in newspapers today.

Part 2

Basset hounds in advertising and pop culture

The Hush Puppies mascot

Hush Puppies, the American casual shoe brand, was founded in 1958 by Wolverine World Wide and has used a basset hound named Jason as its logo and mascot. The name came from Southern slang: hush puppies were fried cornmeal balls that hunters tossed to their baying hound dogs to quiet them, and sore feet were sometimes called barking dogs. A shoe company salesman heard the food's backstory while traveling through the South and realized comfortable new suede shoes could quiet a person's own barking dogs, so the basset hound became the natural face for the brand. If your dog has ever bayed at dinnertime, you already understand the joke the brand was making.

Basset hounds on screen

Basset hounds have kept turning up on television and in film thanks to that same droopy, melancholic look. The animated film The Secret Life of Pets gave the breed a comic turn too, with a wheelchair-using basset hound named Pops. And in one of the breed's most iconic pop-culture moments, Elvis Presley sang his hit "Hound Dog" to a basset hound named Sherry on the Steve Allen Show on July 1, 1956.

Part 3

Real basset hounds owned by notable people

A popular legend claims that the Marquis de Lafayette gave George Washington a French basset hound. But historians have found no mention of a basset hound in Washington's own extensive diaries and letters, even though he wrote at length about his other dogs, which makes the story unlikely to be true.

Queen Victoria did keep basset hounds and folded them into the royal family's highly publicized daily life, and her daughter-in-law Alexandra of Denmark also owned several. Together, the two women's public support helped turn the basset hound from a niche European hunting dog into a fashionable household companion in late nineteenth-century Britain.

Part 4

Basset hounds in the show ring

Princess Alexandra did not just own basset hounds, she exhibited them at public dog shows. The American Kennel Club officially recognized the basset hound in 1885, placing it in the Hound Group, where it remains today.

Breed standards describe ears that should be long enough to reach past the tip of the nose when drawn forward. UK breed clubs have also pushed for moderation in body type, aiming to protect the breed's distinctive look while keeping dogs able to move and live comfortably. If you are choosing a basset hound of your own, that balance between look and soundness is worth asking a breeder about.

Part 5

What made these bassets famous

That look is exactly why a shoe brand built around comfort chose the breed as its face.

None of this fame erases the basset hound's working background. The breed was originally developed by French monks in the Middle Ages, who bred a short-legged scent hound that hunters could follow on foot. Basset hounds have a sense of smell second only to the bloodhound among dogs, and their long ears and loose skin help trap scent close to their nose as they track.