MY OWN DOGS

My household currently has three dogs, only one of which is a Large Munsterlander : Beamer (Hansmic Whitebeam) is now a venerable old lady of 13½ and we also have Scully, aged 10 and a member of that other well-known German breed, the Heinz who we adopted from the RSPCA. and Poppy, 6 years old, another rescue dog and supposedly a Border Collie, but I suspect there's a lot of Jack Russell in her ancestry too! I have previously owned two other Munsterlanders and am growing increasingly fond of the breed. I know Beamer won't live for ever and will probably be looking for another LM in the next year or so.

Our first Large Munsterlander was Mick (Hansmic Damnation) who in 1983 was one of only a few LMs in the UK to have been actually born here of English-bred parents. His grandsire, Axel (Craigburg Baron of Hansmic) was the first LM ever to receive a Challenge Certificate and be awarded Best of Breed at Crufts, shortly after the breed was recognised by the UK Kennel Club. His mother, Olga (Doranburg Aspiration of Hansmic) also had a very successful show career and his sire, Gorsebank Mastermind, was a proven stud dog with a reputation for producing good quality pups, so with such an illustrious pedigree we had great hopes of Mick.

He started off well, winning several rosettes at different levels of competition around the country. The crowning points of his show career were Best of Breed at Peterborough and Best Any Variety Not Separately Classified (in those days there were often not enough Large Munsterlanders around to merit breed classes) at East Riding Gundogs and he was beginning to show definite promise of things to come as he matured. When he qualfied for Cruft's we were over the moon! Then one weekend, when we didn't have show to attend, we took him for a walk along the beach. He was running up and down the cliff face, barking at us, and when I called him to "Come!" he did - straight off the top. He picked himself up, shook himself, and ran off into the sea as if nothing had happened, and we promptly forgot about the incident. Then, a couple of weeks later, he suddenly went lame (at a dog show, naturally.) Intensive veterinary examinations and X-rays finally identified the cause: he had cracked two of his vertebrae and they were beginning to heal and fuse together. Although he did make a satisfactory medical recovery, his gait was permanently affected and his show days were over.

Once Mick had retired from the show ring, we decided to look for a second dog and began the search for a suitable LM - a bitch this time. We had puppies booked several times and, for one reason or another it all fell through . There was an all-male litter, another with brown-and-white throwbacks in it - it seemed we were not meant to have another pup! Then we had a phone call to tell us of a breeder who was having to part with the two pups she had intended to keep. We drove across to the next county, and came back with Suki. Datroy Suki was a daughter of the unforgettable Alex - Axel von Esterfeld of Raycris, a German-bred dog who was imported to improve the blood lines of the breed which until then was almost entirely descended from the original six dogs. Besides being an unrivalled stud dog Alex was also a remarkable working dog whose owner hired out his services to the local rough shooters!

Despite her heritage, Suki hadn't a hunting instinct in her body, found retrieving totally beneath her and wouldn't even chase a stick or a ball! She got on well with Mick from the start but her show career never got off the ground. She HATED it and so we decided to call it a day and retired both dogs to pampered pooch status. Sadly, Mick developed an inoperable tumour shortly before his tenth birthday and Suki was left an "only dog."

Having got used to having two dogs around the place it seemed just too quiet with only Suki but we didn't get round to getting another until she was nearly ten and beginning to take on the role of "old dog." Then Helen, Mick's breeder, rang to say that Joe and Janet were expecting a litter and Guess What! it was due on April 1st, Mick's birthday! The expected litter actually arrived on its due date and we chose our new pup to take her place with us in due course.

Helen had decided to name the new litter after trees, so we asked for our pup to be registered as Hansmic Hornbeam, to be called Beamer for short; the Kennel Club in its infinite wisdom changed this to Hansmic Whitebeam but Beamer it is. (She is recorded on our vet's database as BMW, which causes no end of confusion!) Suki was nervous of the new pup at first but she soon came round and she found a new lease of life. By the time Beamer came into our life we had got out of the show circuit so we had no intention of showing her although she matured into a very nice dog. She is a LOT like Mick in many ways, rather at the "big" end of the breed standard, and very lively and full of fun, but with an absolutely faultless temperament.

 

In 1999 we were joined by Scully. My daughter's school arranged a week's work experience placement for her at the RSPCA animal shelter and she fell in love with an abandoned puppy of indeterminate origin, and you can guess the rest! Beamer loved her like her own baby and Scully has grown up thinking she's a Large Munsterlander (albeit a rather strange looking one!) The rather scrawny puppy which Catherine brought home ate and ate and grew and grew, as tall as Beamer and even more solidly built, indicating a lot of Labrador Retriever in her ancestry.

Suki died on Leap Year day in the new Millenium - February 29th 2000 - and for a while we were back to being a two-dog family, but Christmas 2003 saw the arrival of Poppy, another rescue dog desperately in need of a home (we actually got her on November 11th, hence her name) and she also isn't a Large Munsterlander - in fact, she isn't a large ANYTHING! She thinks she's a big dog, however, and that's what matters...

Best of pals - Beamer and Poppy fast asleep together

 

 

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Copyright © Dianne Davies October 2009 . All rights reserved.