Ellen Borggreve Design

Look who's still here?

On May 2nd of this year we heard Caya would just have a few days to live...We decided to keep her going as long as she was happy and look who is still around...wagging her tail, playing with her toys and loving her food.... Most of the time you would never guess she is ill at all....This picture was taken today just after the little miss noticed that the sun that she was taking in had disappeared behind the clouds once again...

Pictures of the past

Today we finally got the scanner working again after it had been gathering dust in a cabinet for 5 or 6 years. Reason? It did not seem to work with Windows XP and last Friday we found out that maybe it could work after all. After a morning's hard work, what do you know....the scanner does work again and I am in 7th heaven! This means I can have the pictures of all the dogs I ever had on the computer. Oh, I landed in puppy heaven all over again...pictures of Caya when she was just a few weeks old came out of envelopes and I have been scanning pictures all afternoon...
Of course you would like to see some of these pictures, I understand...
Right, remember...these were taken a long time ago (11 years to be precise, as that is how old Caya is now)
Caya at 6 weeks old

Caya at 9 weeks old

And another one of Caya at 9 weeks old

Are you seeing something familiar here? It could be, as most people who come here, say they can see why my bears look the way they do...there's a lot of my Havanese in my bears' faces. Sometimes even I get struck by the similarity in one of my bears' faces to Amor, Cino or Caya...It's amazing how things can happen without you ever really intending for it to happen. How I love this breed...After all these years, I can still honestly say that I love Havanese more than any other breed, it's their coat care that requires a lot of time though, so I'm not sure if I'll stick to this breed in the future, but they sure are great little dogs!

The good ol' days

For the first time in 11 years I found myself watching Cruft's yesterday evening on the BBC. For those of you not familiar with Cruft's; this is the biggest and most important dogshow in the UK and it is magnificent. Well, at least that's how it is for most dog fanatics... Most of you know that I bred and showed dogs from 1990 to 1997. In June of 1997 I knew I had to get out while I still had some of my sanity left. I turned my back on the dog showing and breeding world, but never, as you know, on dogs. My decision just did not have anything to do with the dogs, but it had everything to do with some of the people and the battles that they fought.
Anyway, I have not been able to go to a dog show since or watch Crufts on tv. Yesterday however I did not have anything better to do and so I ended up watching Crufts. Within seconds the Ellen that I thought was long lost, was back...the one that was inspecting toplines, movement, handling faults and fronts. They mentioned the Amsterdam Winner which is the Dutch equivalent of Crufts and that was when I felt this tiny bit of pride. That was the moment I decided to have an ode to Cino on my blog, just this once.

It all started in 1993 when I imported Cino's mum from a well-known breeder in Germany. I had been looking for a female Havanese that would be just right for my male Amor. I found an adult female that had had two litters already. In August of that year a litter of 6 puppies was born and I knew I had to keep 2 females (I was a breeder with just one female Havanese at that time...). On the second day however my eye was caught by Cino. He was the sweetest, most laid-back male I had ever seen. In spite of the fact I really needed to have females, I ended up keeping just Cino. I knew he could be magnificent, but more than that...he was just MY dog. I loved him to bits.
This is Cino at 9 months old

Cino did become a champion, he won his breed at the Winner show in Amsterdam twice and he was best Havanese in 1995. He appeared in 2 television shows and he sired a few litters. More importantly though was the fact that Cino loved to show off, just like the winner of Cruft's yesterday.
Cino in 1995

In 1997 I finally had the first litter sired by him and I kept his daughter Caya. Caya was every bit as good as her dad, but she did not like dog shows, so I decided to let her be herself and not show her. Cino stayed with us his entire life (as did his dad and his daughter now) and he died just after Amor in 2006. He was such a quiet dog, that at first the sadness was not so great as when his dad died. After a few months however I started missing my pal so much. He was the greatest Havanese ever, in my opinion, just because of his gentle personality. Even though Caya definitely has her own personality, she has this way of lying on the threshold, of dangling her head outside the basket, of playing ball, that every once in a while I have to rub my eyes and look again to check if it is Cino I see...
Anyway, this is not supposed to be some sad story. It is a story of a dog that had beauty and sweetness in abundance. I can't honestly say ''beauty and brains'' as he really was not the smartest dog I have ever seen. It is also my way of saying thanks to the dogs in my life that have been greater pals than many people.
Crufts was great and I will be watching again next year! I can now honestly say that I feel proud again to have bred a dog like Cino and to have had the pleasure of seeing him take the big championships. It was of no importance to how I felt about him, but it was great anyway!