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"And I hear them saying
you'll never change things "I am a raindog too!" - (Tom Waits) "Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see" - (Benjamin Franklin) "As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities" - (Voltaire) *********************************************************************************************************************************************************** We are Terry & Mick Brent, we live with our family and dogs in West London (UK) and we have been actively interested in Siberian Huskies since 1992 when we started looking for our first Siberian. Since then we have worked, raced and shown our dogs with some success and a great deal of joy. Our aim is to produce Siberian Huskies of show quality, with excellent working ability and good temperament - dogs which make wonderful companions, can succeed in the show ring and maintain the ARCTIC characteristics which make the breed what it is! Left and centre left - Mick with Addy and Terry with Ria (two of our foundation bitches), Centre right - the tribe at our wedding in 1994. Right - Merlin, our first Siberian in characteristic pose! Our Siberian Huskies are not in any way a business, they are our hobby and our obsession! We both show and work our dogs and in our spare time we are both heavily involved in other dog-related activities. Terry is Chairperson and National head of Rehoming and London Co-ordinator for SHWA(UK) the most successful Husky Welfare group in the UK; and a Committee member of SEAWAPS. Mick is Secretary of The Siberian Husky Welfare Association [SHWA (UK)] - and is a Committee member of Dunstable & District Canine Society and The Southern and East Anglian Working and Pastoral Breeds Society (SEAWAPS). Mick is a member of the International Siberian Husky Club (ISHC). Our Siberian Huskies are, first and foremost, much loved family pets. We feel that showing our dogs in the conformation ring is an important way of trying to maintain the strengths and character of the breed. After all, the Breed Standard should be a 'blueprint' for the 'perfect' dog and any Siberian which fits the standard should, by definition have within it the capability of being an effective sled dog (which is not in any way the same as being a winning racing dog!). Our problem here in the UK is that all our racing is ultra short distance sprinting (2-3 miles), but the Husky is a breed which should be capable of pulling light loads at moderate speeds for 50, 75 or 100 miles a day in arctic conditions. In our opinion, running a team at high speed for 3 miles in British conditions is not a meaningful test of their capabilities as an arctic sled dog. To compete and win in our short distance races, some breeders have been producing dogs which are lighter, longer legged, faster and with less coat (to stop overheating) than the standard-fitting Husky. If you want a dog to win sprint races, fine, but we would rather have dogs which fit the breed standard and which, if called for, could do the job for which they were developed by the Chukchi in Arctic conditions. Why DreamCatcher Dogs? - Terry and I have an abiding interest in aboriginal, pantheistic cultures (including our own English pagan traditions) - cultures characterised by peoples’ harmonic relationship with nature and the earth itself. Dreams and dreaming are recurring themes in these cultures. From the Native Australian ‘Dream Time’ - a mythic world accessed through direct contact with aspects of the landscape both sacred and real, through English ‘Green Man’ and ‘Arthurian’ myths (in which the Green Man appears as both Herne the Hunter and in another incarnation as Gawain - The Green Knight) with dreaming kings, giants, mystics and the earth goddess herself sleeping an uneasy sleep under a sacred landscape, to the Native American, Inuit and Siberian traditions of ‘spirit travel’ through the medium of trance induced dreams, all these cultures still speak to us today (if we wish to hear!). Given this context, it was an easy choice for us to decide upon the affix "DreamCatcher" for our kennel. What are Dreamcatchers? - CLICK HERE to read about the legend of the DreamCatcher
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