Follow our journey as we train our finnish lapphund pup to be an assistance dog.
07/09/2023
Welcome to our page.
3 short weeks ago this little whirlwind came into our lives and has already changed them for the better!
This is Kaiya, currently a 3 month old puppy (7.9.2023).
She's a Finnish Lapphund a slightly unusual breed for this country but a rock star of a breed, in our opinion.
Back in April, after a challenging 12 months, Abigail and I started talking about the idea of her having an assistance dog. This led to us both doing what we do best - research!
Abigail took the lead researching suitable breeds and I looked into what it took to train an assistance dog. At this point neither of us had even heard of, let alone seen a Finnish Lapphund (Lappie for short).
Abigail dug deep, she really wasn't feeling it for your typical assistance dog breeds. But she knew what she was looking for in her new companion. It took months of research to find just 2 or 3 potential breeds but we quickly realised that Lappie's had stolen our hearts.
By this point I had a handle on the UK Law associated with assistance dogs and had reached out to a local trainer with experience in this area.
Now all we had to do was find a puppy!!
This is where Ken Matheson came into our lives. Ken is an experienced Lappie breeder, I emailed him explaining about our family and what we were looking for in a dog and did he think Lappie's would be good for us. Straight away he was so generous with his time and knowledge. He was honest about the potential pitfalls with the breed for this type of work but also knew of other Lappie's that had been successfully trained as working dogs such as search and rescue dogs.
Fast forward to July and we bombing up to Scotland to meet a gorgeous litter of Lappie puppies. It was love at first sight for all of us. We knew Abigail had chosen wisely and that this was the breed for us. The next few weeks felt like an eternity waiting for them to be old enough to go to their new homes.
Then on August 16th 2023 we went to collect this little beastie and bring her home!
