Kennel Sanderfield

Written by Marjut From

My daughter Theresa Silfver and I breed together Cairn Terriers and we have also bred some Norfolk Terrier litters. Most of our kennel activities take place in Kormu, which is part of Loppi municipality. The nearest town is Riihimäki. Tessa and her husband Toni live there with their two daughters. Toni´s older daughter Tia spends also the weekends at home as long as she still is at school. Besides the Cairns Tessa´s family has two cats and and a Bernese Mountain Dog. I myself stay in Helsinki and live city life with two Norfolks in a block of flats.

We consider our kennel as a so called home kennel, because we want that our dogs live life to the full with the family in the same quarters. That is why we have to keep the number of the dogs limited. Of course there is a huge temptation to leave a promising puppy at home, where you have the possibility to follow it growing and maturing.

We have imported dogs from the US, Denmark, Germany and Sweden. We also want to widen the gene ground by importing sperm from different countries, if it is difficult to arrange the mating otherwise. We have also exported dogs to Germany and Denmark.

Kennel Sanderfield has produced several International (C.I.B) and Finnish and Champions. Our dogs have also got many othCH and Winner titles. Our Cairns have also achieved great success in Cairn of the Year competitions during nearly two decades. There have been several Cairn of The Year, BOS –cty and Veteran cty wins. Kennel Sanderfield has been awarded the Vuolasvirta Breeder’s Plaque of the Finnish Kennel Club for meritorious breeding in 2006 and The Finnish Dog Breeders Club Breeder’s Plaque in 2010, both at first Cairn Terrier breeder in Finland. Theresa and myself have both been active in Cairn Terrier club for several years; Tessa for some time now as a member of the club’s health&breeding working group and I as a president of the club. We have received the silver medal of the Cairn Terrier Club for the club work.

Tessa is a professioal groomer. She is all-breed trimmer for home grooming and does the final fixings to the show dogs of certain breeds. Tessa started to train the trimming when we had American Cocker Spaniels. The she studied trimming and grooming in Raija Järvinen´s ( kennel Raijaj) trimming school and after that in Germany under Gisela Gutschow’s supervision (kennel von Tinsdal). Tessa has also trained grooming when she was a kennel assistant in kennel Leavenworth (Cockers and Cairns) and Anja Puumala was her mentor. She learned a lot of bigger wire-haired dogs when working at Schnauzer kennel Pectus.

History in a few sentences:I got my first dog, a collie, in 1969. I had been waiting for her such a long time that the day she came just before Christmas, was a red-letter day of my life. Bessie had two litters and I kept one bitch of the second litter. Beside Collies we acquired American Cockers, but after 1991 did not get any more of those because of their health problems.

We switched to Cairn terriers, which were small and cheerful and whose hair was easier to care for. In 1993 we acquired our pedigree bitch "Armi", formally CH Leavenworth Wine of Fairyland. Armi has had three litters, from each we kept one bitch: Foxy Merrow, Snow Brilliant and Whirling Pound. They are/were all champions.The first Norfolk came from Germany 1998 and the second one I got for a birthday present in 2005.The prefix Sanderfield, was granted to us in 1976.
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