The Kennel

 

My name is Marit Fossgaard and I'm the founder of Kennel Copperdream. The dogs and I live in Tromsø in the northern part of Norway. Here I study medicine, while the dogs "study" at the local dog club. :)

Dogs have always fascinated me, and after my family had to quit the "doggery" due to my sister's allergy, I walked and trained every dog in the entire neighbourhood. For a while I exchanged the dogs with horses and trained and competed with several different horses, but allthough I'm very fond of horses, it just wasn't the same... So in April 2001 I decided that now was a good time to get a dog, and I had already fallen in love with one particular breed - the toller. I contacted the breeding council and different breeders and toller owners, and what they told me matched my impression of the toller, and by the end of May 2001 I was the lucky owner of a mischievous little toller boy with the fancy name Sunlit Patrick Put on Peanuts (Patrick for short). But this was only the beginning...

Patrick as a pupPatrick was a very active and agile puppy, and the first few months I didn't own a pair of trousers or a sweather that wasn't perforated by his sharp puppy teeth. In other words he was a perfectly normal toller puppy! ;) But at the same time he was extremely social, cuddly and a quick learner, so training him was a pure joy. At first I planned to do mainly obedience and agility with him, but at that time the local agility group wasn't up and running, so the agility was exchanged with tracking and search (rescue dog work). At this point we're competing in high classes in both obedience, search and tracking, and we're also on the go in the agility and jump classes. We also do a bit of field training, and Patrick loves it. In the show ring Patrick has done extremely well, having gained a Norwegian and a Swedish championship and multiple CCs, CACIBs and BOBs and even a BIS 3rd.

Tira as a pup

Just weeks after I got Patrick, I started dreaming of a second toller. But I was wise enough to know that it would have to wait at least a couple of years. On the 3rd of August 2003 another Sunlit-toller entered the house, a little girl this time. Tira was a half-sister of Patrick (same mother), and Sunlit Xtra Peanut for Copperdream is her name, but of obvious reasons we don't use that on a daily basis, so she is mostly called Tira (pronounced "Teera"). She got her pedigree name because she belonged to Kennel Sunlit's X-litter, she's my second "peanut" from Kennel Sunlit and hopefully she will be the foundation bitch of my kennel, Copperdream.

 

Breeding goals


My main goal for the future is to breed healthy tollers with good tempers, good exteriors and excellent working abilities. The toller is a working dog, and it should remain so. But the dog should also have a functional exterior that matches the standard of the breed.

A proud Patrick retrieving a snowhen

My type of toller shall be friendly and lively, but absolutely not stressed. It shall not be a lazy couch potato, even though most tollers enjoy to relax on the couch in between activities. ;) Tollers used in breeding at this kennel shall have good tempers with no signs of aggressive or stressful tendencies, but I also strive for well-working dogs with lots of drive. Some people seem to believe that a stressed dog is a dog with lots of drive, but to me there is a big difference. A dog with drive is a dog that does its job at high speed without losing focus, and that can be completely calm and quiet when not working. Unfortunately there are many tollers with too much stress in them, and a great deal of these make quite an amount of noise, too. My hope is to breed dogs that can both work well and keep their mouths shut. Both the sire and the dam shall have merits from both work and shows, and they shall both be 100% gunshot proof.

As for the exterior, I want to breed tollers of good quality and type. No individuals are born perfect, but as a breeder one must be able to see the pros and cons in the dogs, because without seeing the faults in your own dogs, how shall you know what to look for in a breeding partner for this dog? The toller has some exterior faults that are "typical" for the breed, for instance straight upper-arms, long loins, raising toplines, poor turn of stifle, etc. One should always have some goals for the breeding, and picture an "ideal" toller that has all the qualities one wants in a dog. My ideal toller is a toller that win an obedience, field, agility or tracking trial one day, and then win a BOB at a show the next day. To achieve that, the dog must be a good worker, have a good temper and a good exterior, and though it's very hard to find all that in one dog, that will be my goal for the future.

Tira retrieving a deerskin dummy

In all combinations I will strive to keep the inbreeding coeffisient as low as possible, because I think that a lot of the health problems tollers experience today can be related to the narrow genepool we're having. We know very little about how these diseases inherit, but what we do know is that they are inheritable, and one should therefor concider one's breeding material carefully.

As for the hip dysplasia, I will only use dogs with clear hips (and if possible also clear elbows) for breeding. Not only the parents' hip score is of interest, I will try to avoid lines that are "known" for having bad hip results.

All bitches used for breeding on Kennel Copperdream must have been eye examined with the result clear and have a known DNA-status for PRA. If the bitch is DNA-tested with the result Carrier/B or Affected/C, I will only use dogs with status Clear/A to avoid breeding tollers with DNA-status Affected/C. If the bitch has DNA-status Clear/A, I will not necessarily use a dog with a known DNA-status, because as long as the bitch is Clear/A, none of the puppies will have PRA, regardless of the sire's DNA-status.

 

Puppies from kennel Copperdream grow up inside our house, and are well socialized with kids, adults, dogs and other animals. When the puppy is 8 weeks, it is ready to leave for its new home, and by that time the puppy has been...