Wirehaired Slovakian Pointers
Gundog Specialist Judge and licenced Hound Judge
My parents were avid dog lovers, and started their marriage with Golden Retrievers - including two NZ dual champions: Dual Ch Bronze of Silver Peaks (1959) and Dual Ch Lakenheath Amber (1960) so I spent my childhood at both dog shows and on gundog hunts. We got our first weimaraner in 1972 after our gsp died and I bought my foundation weimaraner bitch in 1983. See more on childhood dogs and weimaraners in following pages.
In 1985 we had our first litter of weimaraner pups and started developing Grausturm kennel lines with a few years break whilst we started our own family of 3 amazing daughters and built our careers.
In 1997 I bought my first weimaraner longhair who became the new foundation for our weimaraner lines which specialised in breeding both weimaraners and weimaraner longhairs of exceptional quality and type winning world wide from Crufts, to World Winner Shows and around Australia.
My aim was to create longhairs that would be able to successfully compete against the shorthairs. I did this by taking a longterm approach and breeding longhairs to the best shorthairs in order to create longhair carriers. Once I had bred enough carriers to win against other shorthairs only then did I finally breed them back to get longhairs. It was many years before I bred my first longhair to longhair litter. One famous USA weimaraner judge at a specialty said to me, I never put up longhairs but this dog is exceptional. She was shocked when I told her she had bred the grandfather.
Our strength was in creating longhair carriers that could successfully compete against the other shorthairs in order to then breed a winning type within the longhairs.
In 2018 I finally got my first Wirehaired Slovakian Pointer aka as the Slovakian Rough Haired Pointer everywhere else in the world except Australia and New Zealand.
Introducing a new breed is both a dream and a challenge. Being a breed warden is not something to be held lightly. I had my training as a breed ambassador for first golden retrievers then weimaraners and weimaraner longhairs. However to do this well I will need the support of other purebreed enthusiasts including some who want to be at the start of something special, establishing a new breed which is fit for purpose and meets the standard of those initially breed in Europe. We already have a couple of eager people who are on the brink of establishing breeding programs with the lines I have brought in. We also have some who are creating new breed records for this amazing breed in both field and show ring, obedience and tracking, endurance and sniffer training. We have achieved our first BEST IN SHOW and have a litter planned that will stamp this line in Australia using semen from a dog that is the Leeds Gundog winner of 2024 and best import at Crufts 2023. Exciting times ahead.