Our goal is a Bloodhound that is sound, beautiful and is able to work. Sounds simple but is not. To us soundness comes first before anything else (both physical and mental soundness). The reasoning behind this is, that it requires a lot more work and dedication to establish good sound lines than to breed a typey dog. If you breed a dog free of eg. hip dysplacia to another one, it does not guarantee the offspring will be sound. Whereas if you breed a dog with lots of extra skin to another, it's very likely that also the offspring have a lot of skin.

The explanation is that the inheritance of soundness is often regulated with several genes (polygenic traits) and inheritance of looks is often more simple. With this in mind, we want to breed sound Bloodhounds that live a long healthy life free of inherited problems. A dog is a companion first, other reasons for obtaining a dog are almost always secondary. People expect to obtain a healthy companion with a nice temperament, a dog that will be their friend for years.

Only after this come the beauty and working abilities, which in our case go mostly hand in hand. We believe that form follows function. Bloodhound is a working dog and even though it is described as a powerful breed, it should stay within the size limits that it can still work properly. It should not be too heavy and massive to be able to move in difficult terrains, climb, swim, jump obstacles. Also we do not believe that "a lot of skin" should not mean so much that the dog cannot see properly. The purpose of the extra skin was originally to protect the eyes from underbush when the dog lowers its head while trailing. Still, exaggeration in breed type has turned this to extremity.
We believe that even though smell is the most important sense of Bloodhound, it should still be able to see.

The conformation of a correct Bloodhound is described in the breed standards. The dog should be balanced and powerful, have good strong bone, good angulation both front and hind, long enough neck, strong back, solid pasterns and well-knuckled feet - all qualities that support the function of the dog; ability to move easily and without getting tired on a trail.

Bloodhound is often said to be one of the "head breeds" - one of the goals was to breed dogs with extremely typey heads (very narrow skull with lots of skin). We believe that qualities like a very narrow head or exactly correctly set tail are just extra bonuses in a Bloodhound, not necessities.

So based on the above, the keywords at Maple Bay are:

• Soundness
• Elegance
• Movement
• Performance

Our criteria for breeding are based on quality not quantity. We will only use dogs as free of genetic problems as possible. Also we search the background of stud candidates properly to minimize risking of soundness.