When it is impossible to get another dog, but you still want to plan a little for the future, you have to be creative.

I have been thinking about breeding and my dream is to get myself into the breeding work. I thought a lot about it with Tassla, back and forth, was a little afraid that I might not be able to judge her abilities but was blinded to her being my first hunting dog and therefore felt she was so brilliant. Now I regret it a little, but I made the decision not to breed her because I was uncertain of her resource guarding, which I don’t want to pass on to future generations.

But she has so many nice abilities and has most of what I want in a working dog, so I keep my eyes on dogs of similar breeding – and I really like what I see. They are great hunting dogs, biddable and pleasant in everyday life, to make a long story short.

So, when Tassla’s kennel Miklaus (Finland) published the news of a litter where Tassla’s brother was the grandfather, then I thought “now or never”. I had already met Johanna Andersson, who I knew immediately was a person I would have easy to co-operate with so I simply asked if she wanted to buy half a puppy, which she would own but I would get the breeding rights for one litter. Johanna said “yes”, and we flew to Finland last Easter to do the puppy test. That in itself was a great fun adventure. ?

 After that we decided that we would buy little Brie – the craziest and most terrier-like puppy in the pack, haha, I felt slightly fearful over that choice, but Johanna fell in love with Brie and the quietest puppy I liked the most had to stay in Finland. And all the puppies felt very nice in every way so probably there would be no big difference between them. Now the choice feels great and right, Brie is funny, forward, spirited and happy, and very soft and very, very biddable. She is not a puppy of terror but most of the people she meets she will have “eating from her hand/paw”. ?

The deal Johanna and I have is also that I help her as much as she wants with the training – a very smart way to enjoy a puppy in the right dose, hehe. We live 250 km apart, so it is not that we meet very often but since Brie came to Sweden 15 weeks old, we have met a couple of times and started putting together a training plan for her.

At first Johanna studied how Brie seemed to be and got her used to the big world – but quite soon she began to do some playful training. I am just grateful and happy to be part of this journey and hope that Brie will be a great hunting dog and that she will be healthy. Everything can happen and it may be that there will be no puppies in the future after Brie – of that we know nothing yet. But one can always wish for it!

 A while ago when Johanna visited with her pack for the first time (she has another working cooker as well as a terrier) – Quling took the task as a playmate very seriously and we could sit and watch them forever when they played. Tassla was very upset, haha. She hates puppies. Yet, it only took a day when Quling moved in, before she began to play with him. So, we tried to protect Brie from Tassla and Tassla from Brie but were able to gradually introduce them to each other and support Tassla in accepting Brie’s presence. By the end of the weekend, Tassla was able to walk quietly beside Brie and Brie learned to take it easy around her.

We also took the opportunity to start some basic training with Brie. Johanna has already done some training such as recall and a stop whistle, but she has mostly been focused at playing with Brie – she was not very interested in retrieving initially. But this time she showed that it is no problem anymore when she, among other things, retrieved her first game. ? We also initiated the first hunting exercises, the first casting game and steadiness games with a focus on different kinds of reversed luring games. She was a perfect star and we laughed most of the time during training – she is so cute . ? Super- smart, a little sneaky but very happy and lovely, is a good summary of her personality.

Here’s a small video from the first adventure with Johanna and Brie:

I hope to get back with small reports on Brie’s progress in the future. ?