Happy Birthday Tova!

Two years with this beautiful, as wild as sweet tempered dog and I am thankful for each and every single day! Working for and with this first Howling Northwind litter was, despite all the stress one of the best things I have done in my life so far. Gratulations to all siblings of Tova - may the gods grant you a long and happy life!

Wahya getting famous, Tjalve and his father succeed at the Belgian Club Match and Tova's first eye examination

Yes, I know, I promised to write more often but there were a lot of other things to do (actually I was very busy with my arts and craft stuff, creating some of my best works...) and there was nothing new on the wolfdog front that by all means had to be written here. But now I'll return with some really cool stuff (and a lot at once today;)):

1. Wahya is on the cover of the danish rock band Apollo's new album cover:

Here you can find even more pictures - just scrool through the songs! There are 3 pictures of Wahya

http://www.apolloband.dk/player/fullscreen.html

2. Tjalve and his Dad Kiowa were quite successful at the recent Belgium Club Match -
Tjalve won in the "young males class" with "excellent", his father won the "open class males" with the same result. Kiowa even won the clubmatch, is best of breed, best male and is now official Belgium Champ C.A.C. !!!

a father and his sons

3. Last but not least I am happy to say that the yearly eye-examination (by the way Tova's first one) was without any abnormal results for Skadi as well as for her daughter.

Howling Northwind Roffe

New pictures of Howling Northwind Wahya

Brothers on the seashore

Tjalve and Washita


Tjalve


Tjalve


Tjalve


Tjalve and Washita


Tjalve and Washita


Tjalve and Washita


Washita


Washita


Tjalve, Washita and Wahtesni


Tjalve and Washita

New pictures of Washita

Hell, I really thought I had already posted these new photos of Washita one or two weeks ago. Thanks to Steffi who reminded me of them you can finally enjoy this beautiful wolfdog now!

New pictures of Roffe

Howling Northwind Alfa Puppies One Year Old!

It's unbelievable how fast time runs - now our babies are already one year old.
We want to use this way to send our best birthday wishes to all of Tova's siblings!
We hope you all got nice presents from your owners and have a little party with your pack mates tonight!

Here's a short video of Tova with her birthday present - a big size version of her favorite toy "Oscar the Octopus":


and a recent photograph of Tova and her mother Skadi, taken yesterday:

Tova's siblings

It's time to show off some new pictures of our Alfa-litter.
The pictures were all taken in January 2010. We have no recent picture of Washita because his owners have no (working) camera - but I think this will come very soon.

RoffeWahyaTjalve

7 months update for Wahya ;)

Finally - with some delay ;) - here comes the story about Wahya you are all waiting for!

"Here is a little story about Wahya.
Wahya is our first Saarloos wolfhound and the day we got her, a wish of many years came true.
We have been breeding Golden Retrievers and Labradors for many years and have owned Irish wolfhounds for many years as well, but Wahya is quite different from any of the dogs we have had through the years.
From day one when she entered our house and our dog family, we knew she was very special.
She walked around in the house, like she had lived here all her life. She greeted our leader Easy with a little kiss and walked on to meet the other dogs. The first evening she entered our bed and placed herself between me and Lars for the night.
Tacy one of the Golden Retrievers became her aunt and teacher. Among other things she taught Wahya how to climb the stairs to our bedroom. Tacy took a few steps and waited for Wahya, then she took a few steps more and waited and as Wahya followed, they reached the top of the staircase. Then Wahya ran all the way down the stairs and up again like she was saying “look I can do it myself!”
During the months we have lived with her she has developed a very strong personality.
She is very observant. She looks and learns and she only needs to see something one time to know how it is done. She is able to open our dustbins. They have an electronic opener and you need to lead your hand across the sensor and then it opens. Wahya saw me doing this one time, and then she put her nose on the sensor and the dustbin opened.

Wahya is not a dog – she is a wolf – no doubt about that. She is made of wolf and German Sheppard and one should think that there will be some wolf and some German Sheppard in her, but I can´t find the German Sheppard in her. I have been training German Sheppards on the Royal Danish Air force dog school, where I worked and I believe that I know these dogs and their minds.
A German Sheppard is in fact one of the most easy dogs to train. They love to obey their trainer, and they love to do the same exercise over and over again.
It is fairly easy to teach a German Sheppard how not to bite in furniture, other dogs, walls, beds and clothes.
It is nearly impossible to teach Wahya anything, except the things she can see the meaning in. She have her own mind, and if she is told “NO” for biting in the furniture, she looks up – stare at you with her beautiful yellow eyes, and continue to bite in the table.
She loves her walks with the other dogs in our big field, and she is a very skilled mouse catcher.
She is the most charming dog, we have ever seen. It is impossible to get mad at her, because she know exactly how to turn on the charm, and make us laugh. She seems to have a way of looking into your soul, when you talk to her. She looks firmly into your eyes and talks loudly with a deep growl or a high pitched tone. She is very special to us.
We DO love her very much."

Lars and Merete
Denmark

6 moths update part IV

Today it is time for Roffe:

When the First Brown male was born, i had an immediate connexion with him. I already said when there is a brown male in this litter, I want a pup.

And there was Roffe, he is a great dog. He is curious but has a strong character. When the pups were little he was the quiet one of the gang. He was always sleeping a lot when we visited the pups. Now he is a real strong-minded pup, he likes to do things his way. And if it is not going the way he wants, he don’t want to do it. He reminds me a lot of Thunga (his grandmother), she has the same strong-minded character. You see a lot of things coming back when you look at Roffe.

We go to the dog school with him and he is doing very well over there, there is also an other saarloospup in the school, Elanka, She is his best friend and they really like each other very much.

His best friend at home is Inca, they can really play like mad dogs and they are both loving it. Kamatz doesn’t like to play, he is really lazy and he is a little grumpy when Roffe wants to play with him, but Roffe don’t care, he tries every time again.

Then we have his grandmother, Thunga, and he can play with here, but he also has a lot of respect for her. They look quite simular and now Roffe Is getting bigger it’s sometimes very difficult to see if it’s him or Thunga. And that is sometimes quite funny.

And then there is Asco, he is a hovawart and he is the big boss in here. So Roffe really has a lot of respect for him. But he can do a lot with Asco, pull his ears, his tail, stand on top of him, it is all ok. But when Asco says enough, he stops immediately.

He is a really great pup and we really love him very much. He still has a lot of things to learn and I’ve noticed that he is getting a little bit more reserved in some situations, but that’s quite normal on this age of course.

His biggest hobby is eating. I think that it was already from the day he was born. He really loves food a lot. We are really happy to have him in our pack.

Bigg hugs from Katrien en Peter and of course the other pack members; Thunga, Asco, Kamatz, Inca and last but not least, Roffe

6 months update part III

Let's look at our own little lady tonight - yeah, it's time for Tova (nickname "Angelwitch")
Well, she isn't actually that little anymore, but the youngest one is always considred the little one I guess.
She is truly our dreamdog's incarnation - her temper is exactly the mixture between a wild beast and a sweet and lovely pet you would expect from a young Saarlooswolfhond.
Being in contact with all the owners of her siblings I can say, that she is quite the same in her whole behaviour. She is very playful and cheeky and really has a mind of her own. However, compared to her mother, she loves to play with us and wants to involve us in any of her rampages and malpratices. Skadi always acted more discreetly when commiting her crimes. Nevertheless Tova is very obedient most of the time, at least in comparison to her adult pack members at that young age ;) The bond between us and her is so unbelievable strong...

When it comes to her behaviour in odd situations or towards unknown people, she is quite more open minded and stable than her mother was when she was younger. With Skadi it was hard work to get her as calm as she is today, Tova seems to be born with this doughty attitude towards the strange things in life. I suppose she got that trait for her father.

During the last few weeks we had different totally strange people in our house - one time two very nice women from the swedish Kennel Club who did a regular Kennel inspection (which was btw. without any negative annotation) and another time a chimney sweeper.
While the two SKK-ladies were not of a threatening appearance, the sweep looked quite suspicious with his black clothes and face and all his weird and loud tools.
At least Skadi seemed to have this opinion and met the workman with a healthy wariness. Tova on the other hand overwhelmed him with the same wild and curious fondness as any other visitor. His pursuit to clean our chimney was simply to exciting...
It seems we were successful with our socialisation.

Unfortunately we still have serious problems between our two adult bitches, Tova however loves both of them and shows the pronounced and varying social behaviour of a sane wolfdog-temper.

to be continued...