Hi Kathy,
both my dogs came of course resposible breeders in the UK. I could be speaking out of turn here and i hope someone in the UK will correct me if i'm wrong but UK breeders in the Basenji world as far as i am aware don't tend to breed that many litters to warrant moving a dog on to make room.
The Basenji population in the UK is still quite small
Sorry, but I doubt it.
Lets say you have done it all right and you are starting out with ONLY one bitch. You breed, you keep a bitch. Now you have 2 bitches… breed the original bitch again once the next year, may now have 3 bitches. Next year you may skip I guess, so okay, couple of years later you breed 2 litters (original and at least one of the other 2). So now 4 yrs out the original, 2 daughters, and probably one or 2 from the new litter. You now have 5 dogs. Can you really manage and give attention to 5 dogs? if you have kids and family, sure. What if you want to add an outside dog, or a puppy or 2 comes back, or even the next years breeding-- you can easily be up to 8 or 9 dogs. Doesn't matter if you are in the UK, USA or France, if you are seriously breeding, you are going to accumulate more dogs unless you place the older ones too.
I understand it is hard. Heck I kept and spayed a very doggy bitch (Rottweiler) because my child and husband fell in love with her. Fortunately I had a cobreeder with her half-sibling who took the next generation and sent me the 3rd. But those are ROTTIES who are often gone by 8 to 10 yrs, not much longer lived Basenjis. If you can't do it, don't get into breeding. Either you are serious about moving the breed forward which means a long term plan and generations... or you just want to breed once for the experience. If you are in a breed that is not already bleeding out with massive overbreeding, and you do it right, many once-only folks produce puppies for which there are homes and I don't fault them. But those who are dedicated and keep at it for decades are the keepers of the breed and my hat goes off to their work.
Btw, you want horror stories -- try the Benkisers who had an accidental breeding they didn't want to ever breed from but decided one would be good for working sheep-- so they (their phrase for it) "grew them out" to 6 mos, picked one and SHOT THE OTHER 5. Add in they had a 6 yr old daughter-- well I have never spoken to them since and it's been some 12 yrs. Or Felicia Luberich -- another Rottie breeder, who posted on the AOL boards that she had a litter of puppies she couldn't sell and was going to euthanize them all. Rescue folks BEGGED HER to let them spay/neuter and find them homes. She said if she couldn't get her $2,000 per puppy, no one could have them and she was going to kill them.
Perhaps when you work in rescue as long as I have, you appreciate people who do what is responsible for their dogs. And rehoming a dog at almost any age just isn't irresponsible to me.