John Jeanneney
A Visionary Leader Driven by His Passion By Jolanta Jeanneney
O
n July 5, 2021 my heart was broken when John Jeanneney, my husband of 26 years passed. He was 86. It was not unexpected; his death followed a long decline. His world was gradually shrinking due to his advanced age. I can still recall his last field trial that he attended, his last attempt of tracking wounded deer, and his last training line. I even have a picture when he held a puppy for the last time. There were so many “lasts”, and with many of them we were not aware of their finality. With some we knew. As a spouse and a solo caregiver, even though I
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Dachshund Club of America Summer 2022
knew what was coming, I was not prepared for the aftermath. So many emotions, so many tears and so much sadness. John has left an amazing legacy behind, which involves establishing the standard dachshund as a true working dog in North America. Very few people know how his love for dachshunds started. It all goes back to 1960s. In his private autobiography written for his family John said: “As a graduate student at Columbia University I applied for a Fulbright Grant, which would subsidize a year of research abroad. Amazingly, I was accepted to do work in the archives of the France National Forestry School (Ecole Nationale Forestière) at Nancy in eastern France. At the forestry school I had all the privileges of an exchange student. The Forestry School had hunting privileges in a nearby National Forest. I enjoyed being a beater driving out deer and wild boar to the guns of my fellow students. It was on these hunts that I first saw the use of tracking dogs. The French were just beginning to use tracking dogs to find wounded big game. At the time the Germans were much more advanced in this art. A German student friend invited me to spend a vacation break in Germany, and I learned more about this use of leashed tracking dogs. One of the breeds used was the small hunting Teckel, a European alternative to the longer, heavier, more extreme American/English Dachshund.
I had to have one of these Teckels. Mary Lou (John’s first wife) and I would be living in a 9th floor city apartment when we returned to New York New York. A twenty pound Teckel was the one hunting dog that would fit into this environment as I finished my Ph.D. dissertation. I bought my first Teckel, Carla vom Rode in 1966, and she came back to the States with us. When I could get away on weekends to my parents’ country places upstate, Carla hunted rabbits, pheasants, and raccoons at night. She was the versatile dog that the German breed standard called for. I did not track wounded deer with Carla because this was strictly forbidden in the northern United States.” With his Ph.D. completed John started to teach history at Hofstra University on Long Island, NY. He moved to Wantagh, where he lived for five years. He wrote: “The five years in Wantagh were not all bad. There was undeveloped State Park Land, and it was there that I took my Teckel, Carla, to run rabbits. Dachshund field trials began to be offered in New Jersey. Carla rapidly became an AKC Field Champion. In 1982 work was started on a greatly expanded version of the original “Dachshund Field Trial Rules”. Gordon Heldebrant, President of the North California Dachshund Club, took the initiative in getting the project moving. I
