Great news! After a hiatus of nearly 3 years we have recommenced our breeding programme after retiring our aging sire and receiving a replacement dog from Czechia in December 2015. We are very excited to be further developing this lovely breed of dog in New Zealand and to offer keen hunters the opportunity to own and hunt with the cesky fousek.
Our first litter of pups, in June of this year, has sold, but we now have a second litter of 6 pups, which will be ready for homes in about 5 weeks (in September 2016). These pups are by our new sire Oskar od Jemiluk and one of our own dams: Koha of NewBohemia.
Koha is a lovely dog with a very relaxed temperament and a keen hunter. When she was 20 months old (April 2015) she won the novice class of the Waikato Gun Dog Club Rough Shooters Trial. Later that year she went on to acheive a Prize I score in the Intermediate Hunting Dog Test held by the New Zealand Versatile Hunting Dog Testing Association (NZVHDTA). Koha’s category scores in that test are one of the best that our dogs have achieved, with her retrieving and searching earning her an honorary notation.
Oskar is also one of those wonderful dogs that has a gentle nature, but is a hard hunter. From Czechia he came with a long list of hunting credentials including many Prize I scores in the challenging Utility Field Test (UFT). The UFT is designed to test a hunting dog’s usefulness for the on-foot hunter in all phases of hunting both before and after the shot, in field, forest, and wetland, and on different species of game. In this respect, cooperation and control are essential ingredients of the overall performance. The entire test should, as nearly as possible, simulate actual hunting conditions.
Oskar is passionate about water and shows a real excitement and strong prey intent when he is searching for game. He excels in all areas of hunting as any dog of his standing should.
As of writing this post (5 August 2016), the pups are now 4 weeks old and are starting to find their feet – they can almost climb out of the whelping box. Koha is starting to shirk her feeding responsibilities so I am beginning to supplement the puppies diet with whizzed up puppy biscuits and doggy milk powder, which they relish.
Of course at this age the pups are very cute, hang on, fousek are always cute, no matter the age! There is one pup that is pretty much all brown and with a very thick and wiry looking coat, the other pups have small amounts of liver ticking on their feet or toes and some have chest blazes or T’s that run down their chest toward the abdomen. The puppy with the white socks on her front feet is called Meisje (May-sha), her name means little girl in Dutch, so named because of her small size at birth (280g). But here she is now weighing in at well over 2kg. I can see that in the next few days I’m going to have my hands full once the pups have the strength and size to get out of the whelping box, time to set-up an enclosure for them I think.
This is our 13th litter of fousek in New Zealand and for that reason the litter is called M litter (13th letter of the alphabet), with each pup being given a kennel name starting with the letter M. This has resulted in quite a list of proposed names (some weird, some wonderful) by my boys and the numerous visitors we’ve had coming to see the pups: Missy, Momo, Marsha, Milly, Magdalena, Majda, Matilda, Mavis….and so it goes on.
It won’t be long and these little fousek will be ready for new homes. So if you’re a keen hunter who can provide plenty of hunting opportunities for a gun dog and would like to own a Cesky Fousek you can register here for a puppy: Register Your Interest In A Puppy. Alternatively, if you would like to ask a few questions feel free to email me at nz.ceskyfousek@gmail.com.
Oh, and it would be very helpful to have more names to choose from starting with M for these pups, so if you have any suggestions just fill in the comment box below. Maybe I’ll send out a chocolate fish to the person who comes up with the best name.
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