Kennel Spotlight: Pineridge Icelandic Kennel

SPOTLIGHT BREEDERS: PINERIDGE ICELANDICS
By Jill Fike

Our farm is in the Interior of British Columbia, cold and snowy usually for about five to six months of the winter, and often up to 100 degrees in the summer. Our Icelandic Sheepdog journey began quite by accident. We were at one of the large Icelandic Horse breeding farms close to us looking for a mare and happened to mention that we were getting Icelandic sheep. The owners of the farm, who are Dutch, had bred ISDs in Holland and said we absolutely must get one to round out our Icelandic family and they had friends in Gimli, Manitoba, which has a significant Icelandic settlement, who were looking for a home for a two year old male. We have always had German Shepherds and had never heard of the Icelandic Sheepdog until then and weren’t sure how we’d feel about a mid-size dog, but decided to try.

In March 1996 we set off to pick up Eric, who, I was told on the journey "was to be an outside dog." When we arrived, Eric was stretched out on a leather couch and we were told he really likes to sleep on your bed! I didn’t want to look at Norm at this point!


Anyway we duly arrived home and as Eric was two years old, we quite expected it would take him a while to settle in to his new farm surroundings. However, not so! Once he was through the door, he hustled around until he found our bedroom, hopped up on the bed and fell fast asleep. Our "outside" dog still sleeps on our bed every night, ten years later!


The next morning when we went out to feed, every time you looked back at the house, Eric had managed to get to a window so that he could keep an eye on us. He was such an affectionate dog and settled in so well, was so good with our grandchildren, tolerated the cats, learned quickly that we preferred him not go in with the horses and donkeys, and won our hearts over for the breed in no time at all.


My husband had always wanted to breed dogs and when we finally had our farm, it hadn’t worked out with our chosen German Shepherd because she had a bad case of hip dysplasia, so he began to consider it again, this time with Icelandic sheepdogs. We had a friend going to Iceland so he brought Una fra Skalmholti (11 mos.) and Lukka fra Keldnakoti (nearly 3 mos.) back with him for us from Iceland in June of 1996.


In December 1997 Una and Eric had their first litter, three little girls, two little boys, and there was huge excitement over this. We kept Frekja and Samur from this litter as we couldn’t bring ourselves to let them all go, but then came the interesting job of finding people who would like to own an Icelandic sheepdog! Like us, hardly anybody in B.C. had ever heard of them and when we advertised them, we had questions like "are they like the English sheepdog?", "are they a good deterrent to unwanted visitors?", "are they a good guard dog?" and on and on went the questions, so it did take quite a while to get the breed known and the Icelandic Sheepdog to become a recognized dog, and the Internet initially was our best advertising tool. Since then Dogs In Canada has been excellent at introducing the ISD to the Canadian market and we’ve had many people come back for a second dog, and many of our puppy owners who have been approached by people enquiring about the breed and then contacting us.


Una was a marvellous mother, as all our ISDs have been, with the exception of Frekja from this first litter, whom we had kept, and who didn’t enjoy being a mother. There was no point in continuing to breed her so she went very happily to live with friends of ours. The variation in colours of Una’s puppies was so interesting – two were cream, the remaining three darker shades of brown, tan and white but who lightened to the traditional chestnut colour over the years.


I was fortunate enough to be able to go to Iceland in 1998 to choose a breeding male, and that is how Kolur came to our farm. I saw him and his littermates at three days old, all dark charcoal grey with some white markings, at Anders Hansen’s farm in Hella and chose him immediately. This Farm also had about 250 horses, so my attention was severely divided and it ended up not only being a puppy that came to us from Arbakki but a stallion and three mares too! This was my most interesting ISD colour observation as Kolur is far from dark charcoal grey now, as are his littermates, some of whom I still hear about from their owners and have seen pictures of them.


You will now know that we have been breeding since 1997 and have had the good fortune of making many friends through this endeavour. We did anticipate that it would be as straightforward to register our Icelandic sheepdogs with CKC as it was to register our Icelandic horses and sheep with Canadian Livestock Records. We soon discovered this not to be the case and it took nearly ten years to get to that point. We currently have eleven Icelandic sheepdogs at our farm. Sometimes when they have finished their breeding careers, they go to live with either family or friends who are able to give them a one dog, one family life, which enables them to have much more attention than we have time to give each individual animal on our farm. Otherwise they will live out their lives with us.


We have many visitors here either to see our dogs, our horses, our sheep or our Jersey cows, sometimes even the donkeys! One of the most fascinating characteristics of all our Icelandic animals, and interesting for visitors, is the huge colour variation in all of them. One reason we’ve been so pleased to be able to keep our dogs after breeding is to enable visitors to see examples of this colour variation, also the different look depending on the coat length, i.e. from Tofra Ljosalfur, very short, to Kolur, very long! The difference in coat length can almost make a different breed look.


Tofra Ljosalfur (Alfur) Kolur
Of our dogs, Kolur, Una and Lukka came from Iceland, Alfur from Monika when she lived in Norway, Raf from Denmark, and Narri and Kari from Portugal. Eric came from Gimli, Tryna from Washington, Isa from a breeding of Eric with TK Icelandics Bjardna, Ala from a breeding of Kolur and one of our earlier dogs, Gaela, in Alberta, Frekna, an Eric/Una puppy, Gletta from an Alfur/Lukka breeding. We also have Zoe, a long haired German Shepherd and Misty a Great Pyrenees.


Many of our puppy owners still keep in touch with us and we hear great stories. Last year a little boy called Cody was waiting for a puppy from us. He wrote his puppy a letter and asked us to read it to him, earned the major portion of the price of his puppy himself, and arrived here to pick it up and sat in the car giving him his present that he’d saved for and reading the story he’d written for him inside the card he’d made. It was so sweet.


Quite a number of our dogs are taken into care homes for visits and used as rehab dogs and the breed seems to have an innate capability for this, knowing when they can run up to someone or when they have to be slow and careful. Even their almond-shaped, trusting eyes, are designed for loving visits I think and they dispense affection wherever they go. A fascinating story was the time I was at the coast and we had a pup to ship and the flight was delayed for a day, so my friend Judi was going to visit her mother, who had Alzheimers, in a residential home and she suggested we take the puppy as well as Thor and Frekja, which we did. Norma hadn’t spoken a word for years. We put the puppy on her lap and after a bit it must have nipped her finger. All of a sudden we heard "Don’t you do that!", followed by a big smile. We couldn’t believe our ears, here not only was a word, but a relevant sentence. When we left, we put the puppy on her lap again and she looked up at us and said "You won’t let him go will you." Then everything closed over again. Then there’s the family in California who hike a lot and sent a picture of their dog with his little backpack made specially for him! Sandi’s dog Perla who, when she was out riding and had ridden to the top of a hill, refused to come and just stood there at the bottom of the hill barking. Eventually Sandi had to go back, and Perla was standing beside Sandi’s wallet that had fallen out of her pack.


There are so many stories of the contributions the Icelandics have made to their owners and their families. By far the majority of our puppies have gone to be family pets and it is a great joy to be able to recommend this breed with such confidence for this purpose. We are always available if questions or problems arise and have taken two dogs back where family circumstances required it and had no trouble re-homing them to very happy new home situations. We give a two year health guarantee, the same for hip dysplasia.


Eric is our most special Icelandic because he was our first and introduced us to the breed. There are different endearing qualities about all the others. Our observations have been that the males are equally as affectionate as the females. This theory was tested when Lukka was expecting a litter and we had seven people waiting for little girls, and she had seven little boys!! Fortunately no-one wanted to have a female for breeding! Some love to run and play frisbee, others are happiest settled on your lap. Some like water, some don’t. Our sheep roam freely in the summer and come to call so we haven’t yet used our dogs with the sheep, but some of them have shown their herding ability when we’ve heard thundering of hooves, not necessarily at our request! Our dogs are always so delighted to see us, whether it’s first thing in the morning or last thing at night!


We hope to have the opportunity to show one or two of our dogs this year but our farm, particularly the horses, keeps us very busy. Also we live in an isolated area fairly high in the mountains and away from larger cities, but we definitely hope to be able to introduce some of our Icelandics to the world of the show ring this year. We did take Kolur to the Parade of Spitz Breeds at the coast in 2004 and while he was overwhelmed with the 6 – 7,000 dogs there, he did take several days for his superior attitude to wear off when he got back to the farm! We offer a stud service. Also we’ve considered it a great pleasure to have some of our dogs come back to stay with us while their owners are away. Meanwhile we will continue to breed and do our best to produce puppies with characteristics that will sustain the proud heritage of the Icelandic Sheepdog.

www.pineridgeicelandics.com