My husband and I are breeders of Maremma Sheepdogs and owners of the Alba Bestia kennel (Kennel Union of Ukraine (FCI). We and our dogs live in Dnipro, Ukraine.
First meeting with the maremma We fell in love with Maremmas by accident.
My husband and I were thinking about getting a dog because it was his childhood dream. We immediately formed the image of a dog.
We wanted to have a dog that
— can live in the yard in any weather
— can protect house and property
— can function as a companion
— is big and shaggy.
We studied a lot of information about different breeds until we found something that captured our attention from the first seconds, and we realized that this was it. It was exactly the Maremma Sheepdog. This breed attracted our attention with its beauty, harmony, nobility, and sense of dignity.
Our experience of living with the maremmas We have been living with Maremmas for eight years now. During this time, we realized that, despite its size, the Maremma is a very comfortable dog for any conditions:
— this dog is completely unobtrusive in everyday life. You don’t need to throw a ball, a puller or drag a rope with it all day long. Maremma will sleep quietly next to you all day long and will only get up when you call her for a walk, and then go back to sleep;
— Maremmas are very human-oriented and very attached to their owners and may accompany you everywhere, but you feel their presence only in the background. But as soon as the situation changes, the Maremma will unobtrusively remind you of itself;
— if you have a busy enough schedule, the Maremma will patiently wait for you at home, without the yard and house turning into count ruins;
— if you are a happy Maremma owner, you can go out with it at any time of the day without fear for your life. This dog recognizes threats and hostile people well and is able to protect you!
— Maremma is a very intelligent dog. It learns the rules of living in the house almost immediately and does not break them;
— many people think that such a white dog needs to be washed every day, but this is not the case. I wash our dogs three or four times a year. They have a specific self-cleaning coat: all the dirt just dries and falls off on its own;
— it is much faster and easier to remove Maremma's coat than that of any other short-haired dog. Thanks to its length, it does not penetrate the upholstery of chairs and sofas and can be easily collected with a vacuum cleaner or a wet cloth.
Maremmas for me
What do I feel when I am with my dogs? Peace, tranquility, boundless joy from having these shaggy giants by my side, warmth, delight and a constant desire to hug them. Any stress or bad day becomes insignificant in the evening when Ikar, for example, comes to me and puts his big heavy head on my laps or leans against my legs with his shaggy side and happily wags his tail, or when Vesya runs towards me, meeting me, squinting with pleasure that I am finally home.
My hectic life with a lot of work and worries never left me even a chance to stop and look around. With the appearance of dogs, I have this opportunity every day, and I try not to miss it: walking with Maremmas, communicating with them every day allows me to stop, get off the train called “hustle and bustle” and enjoy life.
Maremmas have become my consolation, a way of learning about myself through interaction with them, a door to a new life. To a certain extent, they saved me from myself. And they continue to save me in the most difficult situations. Thanks to them, I am who I am, and I am overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude for my animals when I think about it.
About our dogs Today there are four Maremmas living in our kennel:IKAR DIMIRA WHITE, E*VESNA S GORY MEZMAY, TSATSA S GORY MEZMAY and BELEZZA BIANCA ALBA BESTIA
How we appeared As I have written before, it was my husband who initiated the appearance of a dog in the house. At that time, we did not understand anything about cynology and did not even think about exhibitions, and we also had no idea that very soon their number in our house would increase. Ikar lived happily on the couch, attended the classes with a dog handler, went for walks in the forest, to visit friends at the summer house, at the seaside, and then my husband said: “Shouldn’t we visit the exhibition? At least let’s see what it is.” And we signed up. First for one, then for the second, and then... all kind of a blur…
I woke up in May of the following year at an exhibition in the Dnipro with the thought that we need a second dog, because Ikar needs company (yeah, of course, I was bored going to the exhibitions with only one Ikar). So we got Vesna after a while. My husband, of course, tried to dissuade me, saying that “we don’t need the dog Vesya,” but when he saw her for the first time, saw how she, four months old, was trying to guard the car and the territory where our things and cages were, his heart was made to melt. Now she is his most favorite dog, that knows no refusal, goes to work with him, but moves around the yard with difficulty, because the crown gets in the way and clings to everything.
So three years passed until my restless nature decided that it was time to develop the kennel further and that we urgently needed a third dog. Having analyzed the pedigree of Vesna and Ikar in detail, I decided what kind of blood was needed. And the puppy was found. My husband, inspired by past experience, was not against the third dog, he even came up with a name for it, Cirilla, and saw her as a second Vesna, but she turned out to be completely different. “As the ship name...” you know the rest. For a long time, Vesna tried to come to terms with the fact that now she was not the only queen in this family, and Ikar came up to me for a while, poked his nose, looked at Ciri, then at me with a silent question in his eyes: “Do we really need her? Are you sure?”
And finally, our fourth Maremma is our Belezza Bianca Alba Bestia, daughter of Vesna and Ikar. She was born in our house; I didn’t plan on keeping her... but in the end I couldn’t bring myself to let it go. It’s a mystery to me why she became Bilka. It could be a combination of the sounds of her official name, or it could be her ability to jump up on all four paws at once. I don’t know. Our attempts to call her something other than Bilka were unsuccessful, and then we came to terms with this name. As a child, we didn’t call her anything other than “Bilochka”, she was such a sweet puppy. Now she is a large adult female dog, whose appearance and gait resembles the gait of a wolf on the hunt, and all that remains of that little sweet puppy is her character: Bilochka is our cat-dog, our kittydog: very affectionate and gentle, but she doesn’t purr.
Kind of breed Our dogs carry blood from the famous Italian kennel DI LUCUS ANGITIAE, as well as DELLA PERLA MAREMMANO. Ciri and Bilka have the accumulation of blood of the Champion of the World and Europe CAFIERO DI LUCUS ANGITIAE.
Our achievements The dogs of our kennel have the following titles: Junior Champion of Ukraine, Champion of Ukraine, Champion of Poland and the Czech Republic, International Champion.IKAR DMIRA WHITE is the only Maremma Sheepdog in Ukraine that has BH and “Dog in the City 2” certificates.
Their life According to the breed standard, the Maremma has all the characteristics to feel great outdoors in any weather: thick coat, strong immunity, excellent health. But our dogs strongly disagree with the standard and say that they are indoor dogs and their place is on the carpet in the house. But all kidding aside.
Our Maremmas are adapted both to outdoor keeping and indoor keeping. We have all the conditions for this: warm booths in the yard and no worries about sterility in the house. In order to make our animals to feel involved in social life and get the activity necessary for health, we take them to the city, or to the forest, or to classes in the handling room several times a week. The question of who creates vital activity and for whom remains open.
And, of course, traveling: we feel some kind of emptiness if we don’t have at least one dog with us on a trip abroad or to the mountains, and we begin to pester passers-by with a request to pet or snuggle someone, in especially acute cases we try to catch up with a fleeing target that does not want to communicate with us.
For us, Maremmas are full-fledged members of the family and their leisure time is not very different from our child’s leisure time in terms of content.
What's next For me, the Maremma Sheepdog is an ideal breed in terms of living conditions, human orientation and intelligence. In addition, they are very beautiful and impressive, and I believe that this breed is absolutely undiscovered for exhibitions and Best in Show, and has great potential in this area.
This breed is not for everyone, but for thoughtful and committed people who understand the craft of a partnership with a dog. I want to create beautiful dogs with a good character and a stable psyche, so that they please the eye with their beauty and give the joy of spiritual communication and closeness with them.
About breeding The moment I decided that I wanted to breed, I realized that without knowledge of dog anatomy in general and the breed standard in particular, I would not be able to build this breeding correctly. Having realized all this, I went to study.
I completed the courses of the Cynological Union of Ukraine with the specialty “Cynologist-breeder” and “Expert cynologist”, and received the qualification of National Category Expert in 5 breeds of the first group. This means that I have the right to judge at national rank shows and breeding shows. But in order to understand the anatomy of dogs and see it, to understand what trends prevail in the breed today, it is necessary to undergo internships in the rings, communicate with breeders, go to monobreed exhibitions and championships. All this became firmly established in my life and in the life of my family after the decision to create my own kennel. And in 2019, we registered “ALBA BESTIA” kennel (registration number 347/19, Kennel Union of Ukraine), which translated means “White Beast”. As my friend joked: “And Bestia is, by any chance, a hint at Vesya’s character, isn’t it?” There is definitely something to it…
The goal of our breeding is to obtain high-quality animals with a strong nervous system, which will combine both the functions of a companion and the functions of a territory guard. To do this,
we carefully study the ancestors and analyze the breed lines not only in terms of anatomy, but also pay attention to the strength of their nervous system and behavior. We strive to make our dogs comfortable for all family members to live together.
Puppies and offsprings. As of today we have only had one litter so far. We kept the best female dog of the litter for ourselves, and the other puppies quickly found their families and live happily both in Ukraine and abroad. All our puppies went to their owners, having received basic socialization in the city. Unfortunately, COVID2019, and subsequently the beginning of a full-scale Russian invasion on the territory of Ukraine, forced us to suspend the kennel for two years.
But life goes on and we are planning the next litter in the fall of 2024.
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