Breeding - our aim

About Us

About the Breed

Breeding

Toller diseases

Breeding - showing

Breeding - hunting

Breeding - game tracking

Sometimes people ask us what aim we have with our breeding: We want healthy dogs with excellent temperament, but they should also be good-looking and good workers.

That's our aim, but it isn't always easy to reach it. When we had the first litter, we had a nice bitch and wanted her to have a litter of puppies. We were very lucky - the bitch got five beautiful puppies, all with clear hips and one of the puppies became champion in both conformation and tracking. But that was not a matter of course…

One needs a good luck, too! In our case good breeding material was a good foundation. But since then we've made quite an effort in order to manage that material the best possible way. There's been many trips and many hours spent on the phone to find males that would make a suitable partner for our bitches. We think it's important having seen the male "live", not to mention talking to the owner(s). What's important is to be completely honest, see the faults that the dogs have and to see the whole picture.

There will always be compromises; there is no such thing as the perfect dog, and you can't find everything you look for in one dog. The toller is a small breed, so it's important to enlarge the gene pool, and avoid inbreeding. When the breed was registered in the Canadian Kennel Club in 1945, only 15 dogs were registered, so all of today's tollers are related, more or less.

Since we are working our own dogs, we know what we need to reinforce, maintain and change in that area. We try to test as many of the puppies as possible on fieldwork, and we're hoping to have regular tests for our litters in the future.

We think that socializing the puppies with both humans and other animals is extremely important, and we use lots of time socializing the puppies and the youngsters. The puppies are born in a room next to our kitchen, and when they are three weeks they move out of the room and in to the kitchen.

Soon after they are practically everywhere, which means that the garden is messy for a while.

Our puppies live with their mum and the other adults until they are delivered, and we allow visitors to manage a puppy or two now and then. We have good contact with most of our buyers, and we appreciate being part of the puppies' lives also after they are sold.