I'm keen to work through the Kennel Club Citizen levels again and am excited about doing this with a puppy. I'd also like to have a go at doing some gundoggery with Cheese and Sophie has made noises about having a go at showing him. There's also a question mark over whether we may work to have him trained as a mental health assistance dog, as I suffer with depression and anxiety, so we have lots of things on the table at the moment, but I'm sure they'll all have been finetuned by the time he actually arrives.
Whenever extensive online research is needed, I call on my lovely friend Mandy and we'll both sit at our computers and Google ourselves into a stupor. I'm also lucky to have 2 friends who are experienced with showing ~ lovely Dee with her Tibetan Terriers, Muppet and Dave, and Clare with her handsome labrador boy Eddie ~ so I also enlisted their help. And Jo likes looking at photos of puppies and doggies so she was helping too ;o)
My list of requirements was as follows:
- yellow (not fox red) labrador
- both parents to have below the average labrador hip score of 14
- both parents to have 0 elbow score
- not a large scale breeder
- if a pure showbred pup, then parents to be of the slimmer build, but ideally a 50% show/50% working pup
- breeder's dogs and pups to live indoors
- a pedigree that isn't crammed with the same kennel name or to have the same dog repeated over and over
- ideally, dna tests for eyes and EIC to have been done with good results on both parents
- in a perfect world, the breeder would have introduced the pup to raw meat as I hope to raise him on a raw diet
I know, I know. I was expecting a lot, but after not much research I knew that I wasn't looking for the impossible.
Very quickly into our scouring of websites and forums, we managed to identify what looked like the perfect potential daddy ~ Ludalor Lunar Orbit aka Seth.
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| Seth ~ Ludalor Lunar Orbit |
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| Seth ~ Ludalor Lunar Orbit |
After speaking to Clare, she suggested also looking at one of Seth's sons, Warringah's Gundaroo. He is a stunning dog but showed an elbow score of 1, but, and I know it's being incredibly picky, when I know that there are lots of dogs out there with elbow scores of 0 I just didn't want to compromise even to that extent. As we discussed the Warringah dogs, Clare suggested taking a look at the Ardenbrook dogs.
Before I'd had a chance to fully check out the Ardenbrook website, I sent the link to Jo who quickly sent me a message insisting that I had to take a look at their Lara because she was beautiful. Being a girl who ALWAYS does as she's told........ahem.........I clicked on Lara's page. Jo was absolutely right, she was beautiful. Before I allowed myself to fall too much in love, I took a look at her pedigree and was amazed to find that her dad is Seth and her mum is a Warringah girl! The 2 lines that I'd been hankering after had both met in this gorgeous girl.
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| Lara ~ Warringah's Wilarra |
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| Lara ~ Warringah's Wilarra |
Her health scores are brilliant, apart from the fact that she is an EIC carrier, but that can easily be managed if mated to a clear stud. So then I let myself start falling in love with her and watched the videos of her that are posted on the website and that's when I truly fell head over heels. The videos show her to be incredibly waggly and happy and clever. Lara has had just one litter before and Ardenbrook have kept one of her daughters, Kalli. The videos of the progress of her previous litter were just wonderful to watch and told me an awful lot about how they were being raised before even making contact with Kate at Ardenbrook.
As far as I was concerned, I had found the potential mum of Cheese!
Again, just to reiterate, I have never done this before so have no idea about etiquette so I decided to do what I'd like done if someone was making the enquiry to me. I emailed Kate almost my entire life story (as far as dogs were concerned anyway) and included photos of the puppies, the cats and my darling Bran. I explained how I had found my way to her and Lara, then sat back and chewed my nails waiting on a reply.
Just a few days later, Kate replied to say that she had really enjoyed my email, although was sorry to hear about Bran, and that Lara would be having another litter but probably not for some time yet as Faith (gorgeous Ardenbrook black girl) is slightly older and may have her last litter first. By now, I had devoured the entire Ardenbrook website and loved everything that they stood for and what they were trying to do with the breed and the fact that their show bred girls are frequently worked. I couldn't believe my luck that I had struck gold with my very first enquiry.
After several emails had passed between us, I spoke to Kate on the telephone and she was just as lovely as I'd expected and she kindly invited us to go and visit the Ardenbrook home and dogs. She suggested that if I wanted a pup sooner, that maybe I contact Warringah or Ludalor to see if either of the boys had sired expectant litters, but I explained that I was fully prepared to wait for as long as necessary as it was Lara that had stolen my heart.
I was ridiculously excited about actually meeting Lara in the flesh but, true to our luck, Sophie fell ill a few days before we were due to visit and was far too ill to travel on the day, so I had to cancel. Kate was incredibly kind and sympathetic and I agreed to call again when Sophie was better.
So, a week later, I managed to get hold of Kate whilst she had her diary to hand and we are now booked to visit on Saturday 20th! I'm not quite sure how I'm going to contain my excitement until then, but I cannot wait to meet Kate and Lara and the other gorgeous Ardenbrook girls!
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