My apologies for the lack of updates this year.

All the girls are doing great but we have not part taken to many doggy activities due to my ill health (a whole different story linked to a mouldy house we lived in).

I took Ellie to the WW-11 show in Paris.

I had already booked&paid for everything so I thought we should still go even though Ellie was totally hairless and should have been hidden away, not shown to the world!

We were extremely disappointed in the organisation of the show, it took us hours to get Ellie’s passport sorted out which meant I missed most of the Leo Judging – The reason we decided to attend despite Ellie’s condition was to see the other dogs!

Also, I have to say the cleanliness (or lack of it) of the show was shocking.

For a World Show I would have expected some people picking up poop or at least bins to be provided as even those exhibitors who bothered to pick up poop, there were no bins to put the bags in. I understand not every part of the world is quite so vigilant when it comes to dog mess but the conditions were revolting and this was the first day of the show. I have heard dogs getting sick after the show and having seen the amount of mess dogs had to walk on, I’m not surprised! I will definitely be thinking twice before going to a French show again.

This summer we did water rescue with Ellie and Star.

Ellie passed A & B tests which we are very proud of considering she had never done some of the exercises in the B test.

Next year Ellie will be training for her C test which will be fun.

Star baby was just practising swimming this summer, she had no idea about rescuing anything  - As long as she is praised for her fabulous swimming skills she is happy paddling around in circles looking very proud of herself!

Next summer we shall try doing level A with her, weight being on the word TRY...

We are also hoping to get Sasha back to training next summer and get her through the level B as well.

We have only done 1 UK champ shows this year since Crufts.

This is partly because of girls being in season, partly my skill of missing the entry dates and partly because of cost of it all.

Importing first Sasha and then Ellie a year later and then having the litter that ended up being very expensive experience has kind of eaten our showing budget for few years!

The terrible two are now 4.5 weeks old and very very cute indeed.

I have loaded pictures and weights under their own page on the website.

We are very proud to announce, first Cleon babies have been born - mother and babies are doing well.

Unfortunately not everything went smoothly and Sasha ended up having  to have a C-section as her contractions ended too early and we still had a baby to come out...

Next day Sasha & one of the babies started a  to have runny tummies and despite fighting to keep the babies going, we lost a little girl. As a day old baby she simply could not cope with the illness and despite all the care we lost her.

At this point we were hoping that would have been it and we could settle and start enjoying the babies.

Unfortunately to my horror the next day our other girl started with the same runny belly where they were just leaking water from their little bums.

Vets did not seem very hopeful at all of the babies making it but I told them I am not losing them and the two we had left would make it, no question about it.

It was now obvious we were indeed dealing with a bug and if it was a normal sickness bug it could pass through their system, if only we managed to keep them alive through it for 24 h or so.

So home I went armed with antibiotics, needles to put hydration liquid under their skin, life aid to keep the energy levels up etc... After over 24 h fight the little girl indeed pulled through and has been catching up with her heffalump of a brother since!

It has been quite an experience as a first litter of our own and I have to admit when Chris asked me when is it Ellie will be having babies he was really trying his luck or wanting to have a black eye!

So we only have 2 precious babies, Stella Star who will be staying here at Cleon and Prince Pogo who will be going to a place far far away... like princes do

Oh dear, little bit of a break in writing the blog again...

But that will soon change as our babies will be due in few weeks and regular updates will be posted so all our puppy families can follow their baby to grow before they are allowed to visit.

Ellie has attended two shows, getting a second in Junior in both(losing to the same girl both times as well  )

Sasha is doing brilliantly, growing the belly and wanting to eat for england!

Another update coming very soon with pictures of our mummy dog.

Ellie ws also LPN1 Tetsed at the club show and to our suprise came back as D/N, carrier. There are no known cases in her family, it just shows the gene mutation can "travel in the line" and as long as breeders have been lucky and not put together two carriers no affected have been born. Both of Ellies parents will now be tested to see where the gene mutation is coming from.

The Scientist have had a breakthrough and there is a test for LPN1 available for Leonberger breeders to use.

LPN1 accounts for 1/3 of Polyneuropathy cases in Leonbergers, there is no genetic markers found for the other forms as of yet but we are one step closer to defeating this inherited illness that affects our beloved Leonbergers. LPN1 is  responsible for the form of Polyneuropathy that affects young dogs so to be able to screen and prevent dogs with the young onset LPN being born is great news.

Anybody looking to buy a puppy should make sure test is carried out and clear on at least one parent of the litter. If one parent is clear this means no affected puppies are born even if the other parent is a carrier. There really is no excuse not to test dogs used for breeding!

The recommendation at the moment is not to exclude carriers from breeding but never breed two carriers together as affected puppies can be born from this combination.

Sasha gave a blood sample when samples were collected for developing the test and we have now received Sasha’s results and are happy to say she is LPN1 clear.

This is great news as my previous girl did have late onset symptoms and I have now spotted her half sister being tested and being a carrier, which means my girl could have easily carried the mutated LPN1 gene too (approx 50% of carriers will get late on set symptoms). In her case her bark changed and her movement did too but when the illness manifests in an older dog it is often much milder and dogs can live with the illness where as with young dogs, the development of the illness is much more rapid and leads to early grave.

More information of LPN can be found in the leonberger union page:

http://www.leonbergerunion.com/index2.htm

We have been very busy moving house and travelling! I have not got internet connection sorted at the new house, hence the lack of updates lately.

Unfortunately Sasha’s scan has revealed we will not be having babies this summer. She has had very strong phantom pregnancy signs since she was mated and definitely got us fooled till the scan. We shall be trying again from her season in the end of the year.

This year seems to be very bad year for Leo babies, many bitches are missing...

Which might not be a bad thing looking at the numbers of Leos going through re-homing. I believe this year we have had 46 dogs going through the club re-homing, which is unacceptable high number!

Somebody is selling their babies to unsuitable homes and leaving others to pick up the results!

Our new imported girl hs joined us here is UK!

WELCOME to UK Ellie! Rekileijonan Hunaja-Pupu among Cleon is home!

Baby Ellie has joined us and the girls are settling down together just fine.

We attended the World Show in Denmark and brought her home with us.

Ellie did very well, she was in Junior class just by a day. If Leos had been on the day before she would have still been in puppy class so she really was a baby in a class that covers girls up to 18 months old. Despite her age, she got an EXC and went out just before the girls that were placed so was in the top 7 in a class of 20 so we are very pleased.

Love is in the air...or maybe it should be wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am!

We will be going for an ultra sound next week to check if Sasha really is expecting or if she is pulling our noses and just using the "pregnant" status to get extra cuddles&Treats. Not to mention the middle position in our bed, there is no better place to sleep to get daddy and mummy cuddles at the same time... With the hot weather we have had, it has been lovely to have 50 kg of fur to keep us warm. We also really enjoy the slight vibration a panting Leo on a spring mattress causes.

The other day we were driving somewhere with Sasha at the back... We stopped at the traffic lights and our car rocked from side to side, What is that??? Oh, it is only Sasha changing the window she is looking out of!  Even when the car is stationary in the car park, ours still moves like the motor is on and it is ready to go, the joys of having a hot panting giant dog at the back ... I wonder if having two will balance things out and we will be "leveled" all the time?? Will they cancel each other out if both are panting??

Before the ultra, I will be going to Finland to see our young lioness Ellie.

I have added some pictures in Ellie's album but as I'm visiting her soon, brand new pictures of her coming soon.

We have progressed slightly...

Some lifts below:

Sasha does not like rope toys so just getting her to take it in her mouth has been the first challenge! But as in water rescue they need to handle(should I say mouth?) a rope I thought we might just get her used to a rope. Last year we were very lucky as in the test, just by a miracle Sasha did work with a rope but that literally was the first time ever(talk about lucky)!

We shall work on getting little more excitement&speed in to her "lifts" before I move to the next step. With Sasha, I can not do too many repeats when practising something new as when she is not sure about how to do something( e.g. learning) she quickly gets fustrated and just walks off... So it will be slow progress but progress never the less.

The weather has finally changed and we have had some lovely spring weather.

Not much to report, we have hibernated and have not done much, I shall try being little bit more active when it comes to updating the blog. Well if everything goes well with THE wedding of Sasha and her -husband to be- the blog will become *Puppy blog* so lot of updates expected later this year :). If you are a reader and are interested in a puppy from our beautiful girl, please get in touch as we are collecting a list already.

We visited Crufts but for the first time ever, I did not spent the whole day watching the Leo ring but went around shopping etc. We have also applied for our Kennel name so watch this space, should hear from KC in few weeks.

Baby Ellie is doing well, soon to be 6 months old so not a baby anymore! She has been to a dog pool and loved swimming so I hope we will have fun with her next summer at the water rescue :). Sasha will hopefully be busy with maternal duties so it will be nice to get Ellie out by herself and see how she does. I must get my calendar out and enter Ellie to few shows here in UK as it will be nice to show in a puppy class, Sasha was too old when she came to UK.

HERE is a link to Ellie's sister Lyyli learning retrieve, she is 5 months old in the clip. The retrieve has been made fun so the dog stays interested, there is no point in repeating the correct obedience retrieve over and over again, you will soon have a puppy that will not do a happy retrieve. Lyyli has also graduated to retrieving a metal object, not bad at 5 months old! I always found retrieve to be the most difficult part to teach to my Leos. I failed misearbly to teach it to my lazy-berger, how ever I tried to do it!

Probably following the failure to get Sani to retrieve I have never tried to teach Sasha to retrieve. We did do lifts to my hand after her accident to keep her brain busy and she knows to bring an object in to my hand at home but I have no doubt she would not do it anywhere else! Maybe I should set that as the task for the next few months, teach Sasha to retrieve! I might have to get some tips from Lyyli's owner first :D

I have found my Leos get bored with repetative obedience and enjoy doing tricks and different things much more than "boring" heel work. It is very important to keep their mind ticking and not repeat the same thing too many times. I find even at the training classes Sasha is great for first 15 minutes but then totally loses interest! If the same move is repeated too many times I will get the amused face "what again? but I just did it!". All of my girls have been very different when it comes to teaching them. Bonnie was a dream and wanted to work for you. She was also very clever and easy to teach.

The middle girl Sani just was not interested, we think she was slightly braindamaged when she was born so she really was not "the brightest grayon in the box" bless her. She was very good in giving a paw and would always try to see if that was what we wanted, even is she was told to go down she would happily give a paw  first, just in case we actually really meant give a paw :). She was good at giving paw! Very sweet girl but would have never made a good obedience dog!

Sasha can be good, but only when she wants to! She also gets bored very easily, she too like Bonnie is very quick to learn. Of course I got her home at 14 months so she has not grown up with me and her attitude might have something to do with being very spoiled when puppy. She did not really have to work for treats etc so she can get very fustrated if the treat does not drop quick enough...and she will literally just walk off!

Poppy the parrot has been a totally different ball game! Yes, she has had to go through the training too, including retrieve! Below are few selected videos of Poppy doing her tricks. She learns about 10 x quicker than the dogs and it is very easy to reward the wrong thing, the first video is a great example of this... I was clicking "wave" move when I thought she was starting to wave, when in reality she was just about to scratch herself... So the enthusiastic waving she does, really was a mistake from my behalf but with some shaping we ended up with the very cute move indeed.

Poppy waving

Poppy RETRIEVE

Poppy TURN