In 2006 Bowie was mated to Whipcat No Angel "Nelly", owned by Birgit and Steffen of the Gnomenhain kennel (Germany). The litter was born on August 21, 2006. There were 3 boys and 5 girls. We went to look at the pups when they were 6 weeks old. Right then, Tinne already had a favorite. At 9 weeks, she made the decision, with a little help from a few experienced friends.
Funky joined the family in November 2006. The other dogs needed some time to get used to him. His father is his best friend. Ixelle needed the most time to accept him. But after two months, she is his biggest playmate outdoors.
Funky is now almost ten months and became a good friend of all of us. He seems to be more active than his dad, and certainly as friendly. His dad is a couch patatoe, while Funky shows more character.
On Februari 22, 2008, -- a day after he became 18 months -- Funky passed the TAP-test. The test consists of all allowed obstacles and has to be completed with at most 3 faults. Since he paased the test, he is allowed to participate in agility trails. We will start with the trails in May. We started the agility training in august 2007, focussing on the weave (slalom). After our vacation in September, he was 1 year old and we also teached him the other obstacles. Everything went well, except for the weave-poles. He did not "get it". We used the technique of 2 separate rows of poles and brought them slowly together. Unfortunately, as soon as he could not run between the rows of poles, he jumped. In November we changed the teaching method. We started with only 6 poles, gradually increasing the number of poles. We used plastic bows between to poles to avoid that he could jump out of the weave. In the beginning we used 3 bows between any 2 poles, decreasing the number as we got further. We trained every day for 5 minutes. The day before the test, we tried for the first time without the bows. He did it !
Visit our smugmug website for some recent photos.
