ZEUS

Our first dog was an SPCA rescue. Zeus was an 18 month old Ridgeback Huntaway cross who had a hard start to life. He taught us both so much about owning a large dog (he was 45Kg) and I think without him we would never have taken on a Flat Coated Retriever!

Our first introduction to a Flat Coated Retriever was meeting "Kenny" who belonged to Vickys' boss and his wife. Kenny was very handsome and full of fun - and so the love affair with this beautiful breed began.

Three weeks after having to have our beautiful Zeus put to sleep at 12 years old we were off to the SPCA to find another friend. The "Dog God" was looking after us that day when Vicky's boss sent a text message saying that he had found us a Flat Coated Retriever needing a new home...were we interested?

MURPHY

Murphy (aka Sir Murphy of Lochin) joined us after being left behind in New Zealand while his parents moved to the UK. Unfortunately things didn't work out for them and they went their separate ways leaving him homless.

The moment we saw him trotting around we were hooked.

We thought Murphy was only 4 years old so off we went to join agility training -something Vicky had always wanted to do. It wasn't untill about 6 months later that we found out that Murphy was actually 6 years old and getting a little old to start agility training... but nobody told him that!

Murphy was very keen to learn and was a natural. Then a short time after starting  agility we found out that Murphy was in fact blind in one eye (a birth defect!) and given his age we decided to fulfil a dream of Vicky's and began the long hunt for a puppy.

We had been keen to get a friend for Murphy anyway!

The investigation into the kennel we would like a puppy from took time and energy but finally we came across one that we liked, with both the dogs and owner appealing to us! After a long years wait Finn finally arrived in New Zealand from Bushman Kennels. 

A so began Vicky's friendship with Judy Kennon-Wray and our relationship with Bushman Kennels in Melbourne Australia!

FINN

NZ Ch Bushman Southern Coovara (Imp Aus), call name "Finn", was so named because like Murphy means “hound of the sea” in Irish, so does Coovara. We wanted to tie things in as Murphy was the instigator of our love affair with Flat Coated Retrievers!

Unfortunately their friendship was to be short lived as we lost Murphy quite suddenly to cancer when Finn was just 5 months old.

BUT fortunately for us Judy Kennon-Wray from Bushman Kennels said “oh but now you can’t have just one” and she had a beautiful litter of puppies on the way… and seven months later along came Riley. 

RILEY

Bushman Trouble Is (Imp Aus), call name "Riley", is an awesome puppy out of the Grand Champion Bushman Hit Or Miss – a truely STUNNING bitch! Riley was meant to be the bitch we needed to start our kennel but he was such a lovely boy we had to have him instead of one of the girls! He has been such an easy puppy and is already showing what a great dog he is going to mature into!

So now to round off our kennel we are eagerly awaiting our foundation bitch puppy….

OUR PLANS FOR THE FUTURE
 
Our plan for the future is to breed more of these lovely dogs so people can have them in their home as family pets. So many people already are asking us “WHEN!!??”

The answer to when is currently, as soon as we have room and as soon as we can get ourselves a girl who will nicely compliment our boys.

If later along the way, we can also help the breeding stock in New Zealand we will gladly do so but we believe in only breeding dogs of the best health and temperament.

The Team at Bushman Kennels have spent many years keeping their lines true to breed and free of health and temperament problems and there is no way we will compromise the hard work they have done. We sincerely thank them for this and all the help they keep giving to us in our efforts to show off our boys!

Our journey and love affair with this wonderful breed is just starting but we hope we can give others an insight into how great it is to live with them.

We hope you enjoy our site and our handsome boys!!