How Artbel came into our lives...

In June 1999 we first encountered this breed. We went on a weekend with friends and upon arrival at our hotel (a B&B style, ecological farm) De Koningsmolen, we heard a bark of a dog. It was about 10pm, but that bark had a clear meaning: "Enter but beware". All we could see in the twighlight was the silouet of an alert dog sitting besides the wall. Shortly, the hotel owners came out to greet us.

Only the next morning it became clear how the dog, Albin looked like. You couldn't call him a white dog because only a week before our visit the farm was flooded with mud due to excessive rainfall. The dog had not been washed yet. Somehow we were atracted to this special kind of dog, allthough the rest of our party didn't share our enthousiasme. We were even more amazed when the door opened and another dog, Pirosh walked out, followed by 5 white balls of fur only a few weeks old. Katleen her white trousers had to go to waste but she couldn't stop petting and playing with them. Kurt,who had been nagging for months to get a dog, proposed to get a pup of this breed.. While Pirosh searched for Kurt's atention, while Albin went to Katleen. In the meantime, the owners told us more about this race and how they had nature go his way with Albin and Pirosh. One pup had been chosen allready, the rest was yet to be sold.

But then sunday afternoon came and so we returned home, after getting some last information. They told us the breed didn't live well on an apartement, that one had to reconsider buying such a dog and that one had to be consistent in the upbringing of a pup. Especially that last remark was ment for us; a young couple buying their first dog. We both had had dogs with us growing up but in the end they were raised and cared for by our parents. In the car we decided to give this race another consideration.

The next day we ran into each other in the dogsection of the library. It was a suprise for the both of us. We than went on a search together. What discription of the breed we found fitted our standards well. We found that it was a real advantage that we had had the oppertunity to see both parents with the pups in action. Albin fitted the discription as being a well socialized, easygoing and independent dog while Pirosh was more of a free spirit, More open and liked to be cuddled a lot. That same night we phoned to let the owners know we wanted a pup. We had not decided if we wanted a sire or a bitch.

A few weeks later we went back to the farm and took the time to choose. Whilst playing with the pup's, one came to our attention, playfull but not intrucive. She wasn't the leader of the group or an outsider. Our choice was made. Her real name was Yana but we had decided that she was called Artbel, after Kurt' s grandfather, Albert who had passed away only recently.

We were lucky when we chose our dogschool. The school wasn't fixed on achievement and the teacher was very much interrested in other breeds. She informed the whole school, after a few weeks of research, on what breed it was, what it pro's and con's were, etc. She had a lot of patience when Artbel had to fetch because a Komondor isn't that kind of dog. She defended her policy on getting more done with kindess then with force to everyone who criticized our dog. We ended up in the third group because of this, a thing not manny Kommondor will do. A fine achievement we might say, she didn't allways listen as she was supposed to but when something had to been done, Artbel was there.

In the meantime we continued our search for other Kom-owners. And so it happened, that we found an image of "Pirosh, the cuddle Komondor" on the net. What were the odds? Pirosh was sold to another owner after the litter because to many guests complained that she was TO playfull. And so we got to know the new owner, Brigitte Konckers, who had been breeding this breed for some years now. Through her we got in contact with other Komondor and Puli owners in Belgium and other countries. She adviced us to enter in a few dogshows, just to see how Artbel fitted the Breedstandard. We won most of our shows and received good comments on her most of the time. But what matters to us most, is that Artbel just stayed a dog and not a showdog. Fortunatly this is is a normal thing with most of the Komondor.