Betsy Richards walks with her Berger Picard dogs (left to right) Sassie, Boomer and Beaujolais.

Eric Brady | The Roanoke Times

How to get a rare breed recognized

The Foundation Stock Service is a registry within the American Kennel Club that helps breeders of rare, purebred dogs keep reliable records of their dogs' pedigrees, and it is the first of a two-step process before being fully recognized by the club. To be added to the FSS, the breed must already be recognized by an acceptable foreign registry and the breed’s American club must:

• Fill out a questionnaire
• Provide a written breed history with supporting documentation
• Provide an official breed standard
• Provide photos of the dogs, both puppies and adults, of all accepted breed types

The next step to full recognition by the AKC is to move from FSS to the Miscellaneous Class by:

• Forming a strong national breed club with at least 100 active households
• Forming active committees such as breed rescue or health, putting on breed shows and publishing a quarterly newsletter
• Encouraging breeders and owners to register with the AKC
• A minimum of 300 to 400 dogs with three-generation pedigrees owned by individuals from across the country are required to move from Miscellaneous Class to full AKC recognition. Four breeds made this move in 2007: the Beauceron, the Swedish vallhund, the Tibetan mastiff and the Plott hound, the state dog of North Carolina.

Source: The American Kennel Club, www.akc.org

Betsy Richards remembers precisely the day she found her passion.

"It was Feb. 21, 2005," she said laughing. "I fell in love in the movie theater."

The film was "Because of Winn-Dixie," and Richards was smitten with the rascally mutt she saw stealing scenes on the big screen.

Three years later, the 50-year-old Roanoke resident is a leader in the proliferation of "Winn-Dixie" dogs in the United States and is working toward resurrecting a breed that once faced extinction.

In the movie, a mischievous mutt helps a young girl deal with upheaval in her life. At the time she saw the film, Richards said her own life was in transition. She was a divorced parent, with one son in the military serving in Iraq and two more sons in their final years of high school preparing to leave for college.

The death of the family cat had Richards thinking about getting a new pet to "fill up that empty nest thing."

Charmed by the movie's smiling pooch, Richards started doing Internet research on the canine star. She said she was drawn to the dog because she thought its shaggy good looks and goofy grin resembled her sons.

She learned that the "Winn-Dixie" dog was no mutt, but was a purebred Berger Picard (pronounced bare-Zhay pea-Caar), also known as a Picardy shepherd, a rare breed of herding dogs native to the Picardy region of France that was almost wiped out during World War II.

At the time the movie was made, Richards said there were less than 15 Picardy shepherds in the U.S.

"[The filmmakers] wanted a dog that looks like a mutt," Richards said. "But to make a movie you need several dogs that look alike, so they used this breed because almost no one [in America] would recognize it."

Soon Richards was contacting the few American and French breeders she could find. Then she found a ticket from Dulles airport in Washington, D.C., to Paris that was less expensive than a ticket from Roanoke to Kansas City, Mo.

She grabbed her passport.

Bringing back the Picard

Richards spent a week in September 2005 living with the breeder in the Picardy region, attending the French national dog show and meeting dog breeders from all over Europe. At the end of the week, she brought a fluffy little puppy, Alsace des Garous d'Ebene, affectionately known as Sassie, home to Roanoke.

Since then, Richards has added two more pooches, Boomer and Beaujolais, to her Picardy pack. Boomer was acquired from a breeder in Florida in May 2006. After he finished his military service, Richards' son Doug visited France and brought Beaujolais home with him in July 2006.

That year Richards said she used the organizational skills she's honed through years of political campaigning and volunteer work to found the Berger Picard Club of America, the breed's national club. She was elected its president, writes for its newsletter, maintains its Web site and organized its first national meeting in December 2006.

Richards and her 61 fellow club members got Berger Picards added to the American Kennel Club's Foundation Stock Service registry in 2007, the first step for rare breeds to be fully recognized by the nation's most well-known pedigree registry and eligible to compete in events like the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

The breed was recognized by the United Kennel Club in 1994, and Richards and other club members regularly compete in UKC shows. The UKC's breed standard for Berger Picards describes them as "a medium-sized, well-muscled dog, slightly longer than tall, with a distinctive rough coat and erect ears." They are also described as a "lively, energetic, affectionate dog."

Richards said she realizes some people will not understand why she imports purebred pups into the U.S., which is already overpopulated with homeless dogs. But she said she thinks it's more appropriate to aim that criticism toward people who choose to buy designer dogs like Labradoodles and Yorkiepoos.

"We are resurrecting a breed that was almost lost," she said. "It is still rare even in France. And those of us that own a Picard, we think it is worth preserving."

A herd of loyal fans

Sassie and the rest of Richards' merry pack appear to be good ambassadors for the breed. Joan Coury, a friend of Richards' sons Will and Stephen, fell hard when she met Sassie. Joan's mother, Pat Coury, was also smitten with the pooch.

"They have such fun, goofy-type personalities," Pat Coury said of the dogs. "They are very entertaining."

Richards put Coury in touch with a breeder in Denmark. During Christmas break in 2006, Coury said she and her daughters flew to Europe to pick up Bacine, an 8-week-old puppy, and brought her home to their 40-acre farm in Boones Mill. Richards brought another Picardy shepherd puppy, Cosette, back from France to live with the Coury family in 2007.

Coury said caring for the dogs is now a 4-H project for her youngest daughter, Jillian, 13, who plans to show Bacine at the State Fair of Virginia.

She said the Picardys fit right in with the family's two other dogs, horses, goats and chickens. Do they put their shepherd instincts to good use?

"They attempt to herd the goats, but the goats are pretty much unherdable," Coury said, adding they do seem to enjoy chasing the chickens.

Sandi Helms, another family friend, used Richards' network of breeder friends to find Boudreau, a puppy she imported from the Picardy region.

Helms, a former school teacher and longtime stay-at-home mom, said she, like Richards, was facing a soon-to-be-empty nest when her youngest daughter Betsy was making plans for college.

When she met Sassie, Helms said she wanted a dog just like her to be a companion for her family's golden retriever, Corey.

"They are the most comical dogs," Helms said. "There is not a day that [Boudreau] doesn't make me guffaw," adding that her dog's scruffy facial expressions remind her of the character Kramer from the television show "Seinfeld."

Helms said training the Picardy puppy has been a project she shares with her kids.

"It pulls out the nurturing in them," Helms said.

Richards said the affectionate nature of the dogs helped take the edge off the typical adolescent angst for her sons, describing the happy-go-lucky pooches as "teenage Prozac."

"Will would come home from school mad at the world, and he would look at [Sassie] and he was like a different person," she said. "I heard him say one time, 'Sassie, if it wasn't for you, I'd stay mad all the time,' "

The dogs have a similar effect on Richards. "They just make me happy."

Have a great picture of your favorite pet? Send it to the Happy Wag blog at blogs.roanoke.com.