History

The start of our kennel

Lappunaaman kennel was actually started in the fall 1988. I was visiting my good friend Kati Puhakka to see her corgi puppies. At that time Kati didn’t have any tricolor bitches that I was hoping for, so I had to wait a bit more to get that kind of puppy. Near Christmas I noticed that our local news magazine had an announcement of corgi puppies and a phone call confirmed that there would be one tricolor girl in the litter.

On Christmas holidays we traveled to Kaipola to see the puppies. I noticed that inside the puppy box was this one dark colored puppy looking at me with a serious face. Her non-stop staring made my heart melt and I was sold. Although for a minute I tought that the breeder of this lovely “blueberry” Anneli Sutela would not sell the puppy for us, because she was asking so tight questions. Still at the end of the discussion we agreed that Annline's Kind Blackrose would be ours.

On November 28th 1988 born Nuppu arrived to Tampere in January 1989. Anneli brought the puppy to Tampere. When I came back home the black grumbler was sitting under a table, but came to me happily after I called her.

Nuppu was fast to learn, a real persona and the biggest glutton of corgi kind. She was able to eat her food bowl empty during the time I straightened my back. At the Corgi association’s summer event she “broke in” to the tent of Emilia Koskinen and ate all the food of her dog. On the next day the hostess had chopped sausage pieces that were ment for other dogs and left the bowl on a bench, Nuppu ate them before anyone blinked. In the hope for food, Nuppu learned how to “dust a jacket”, sitting up with bluecheese and grapes plus many other things. Once she managed to eat half a box of Danish pastry at the Pyynikki summer theatre’s cafe and during that same summer she ate a lot of poop left from a horse which was playing a role in that same theater. Climbing on a table was no problem, she poked a children’s chair next to the table if necessary. Jump grabbing oven baked bread rolls from the table was a piece of cake. She ate a bowl full of nuts and raisins in minutes, couple kilos of Mastery dry food from unbroken package in less than a minute etc.

We had to stop Obedience Training right after the basics, since Nuppu managed to trick us in that too. She learned things really fast and got bored when we didn’t invent enough variability to our methods. Also at that time forced training methods were prevalent at our training field, which really wasn’t Nuppu’s cup of tea. She knew how to do the beginner class tricks just fine, when she wanted. Our hobbies with Nuppu were not just active walking on the tough terrains of Pyynikki, but also agility which Nuppu loved but there her herding drive appeared strongly. To many people I have told that I should have had iron trousers during the training, that’s how much Nuppu was pinching my calfs and buttocks. Just turning to the road of our training hall started her excited whining at the back of our car. I participated one official competition with Nuppu and we even got a result. I was very happy that in the middle section of the track was a table because I felt like I already had a colorful face due to lack of oxygen. In the first half I had just tried to keep up with the dog and not remembered to breath. Even during the competition Nuppu came by to pinch me many times, and after the race judge did say that I’m giving orders too slowly.

We started going to dog shows with Nuppu. Afterwards I have counted that we did it alot in the early years, since I think that during the first actual show year (1990) we visited at least 13 shows, mostly reaching just the second place. Nuppu was a slowly formed individual since she reached the status of a Beauty Champion after the age of 10 years, after that also best bitch -places became familiar.

Our breeding work probably started quite the same way as many others have started it. A desire to have puppies for our own dog. Just that desire shouldn’t be the only reason for making puppies, but we dare to confess that when it comes to us it was just like that. Altough we didn’t trust the traditional believes of bitch calming down or many other things like that. Knowledge was acquired from breeder basics course for example. The kennel name Lappunaaman is named after our foundation bitch Nuppu’s face, since she was a Black Headed Tri “BHT” and for the love of tricolor fur. The kennel name was granted to us in May 1991. After those times the criterias for breeding work have notably changed. In our breeding work, we strive to pay attention especially in characters, socialization of the puppies and health factors in combinations. We also appreciate openness, good teamwork with the owners of our corgis and cooperation partners.

We had to let our foundation bitch Nuppu go in the beginning of March 2002 when the cancerous tumor had spread.