David Dalton is a well known animal photographer in Europe. He has photographed several Barbet owner’s dogs and this time he visited the Von der Leibrücke Kennel to get some AMAZING shots of Walda and Henk’s Barbet beauties.
One day I hope to have a Walda puppy of my own. For now I will live through her beautiful photos.
On my American Barbet blog, I wanted to feature Barbet in America but also Barbet across the globe. So without further ado let me introduce Tomasz. He is a stellar Barbet owner of Argo in Poland. He is the mastermind behind the frenchwaterdog.org as well as a devoted pet owner to his Barbet Argo. His girlfriend is also a pretty good photographer which is key to my barbet heart of course! On a recent summer excursion, they brought their camera, and barbet Argo along. Check out some of their beautiful photos : http://kula.ndl.pl/index.php/galeria/nad-rzeka/ featuring Argo and friends swimming and fetching in the water.
You can keep up on Tomasz’s regular blog: http://kula.ndl.pl/if you need help with translation (I know I do.. my polish skills do not exist) use: translate.google.com/
My 10 month old Barbet, Isis took the BIG plunge! We took her out to a lake this past Saturday and although the water was a bit choppy, Isis still managed to jump 2 times after her frisbee. I can not wait to keep working on her (and Lia) on this as it is amazing to see the retrieving instincts taking over all logic. Her ability to leap off a dock to retrieve a frisbee made Walter and I leap, clap, whistle, and do a happy dance. We need to build her confidence in swimming hence the pink polka dot life vest. I do not doubt her strong ability to swim but I fear with all the waves (there were ALOT of boats on saturday) that I wanted to ensure her safety. Yes I’m a paranoid “mom.”
American Barbet | Barbet Breeder
Yes yes I know they are water dogs but that still doesn’t mean I won’t worry about them. We got our girl Isis a pink life vest as we’ve been working on retrieving with her in the water. She does SO well and is so determined to get the water toy. Because of that, we felt she needs some help until she strengthens her understanding on swimming. Also we hope to get some boat time in soon so being in the open water with a dog, I’d recommend a life vest.
Chris and Ula (thefriendlybarbet.com) just welcomed home Frankie, to their beautiful Barbet family in Canada. Her full name is Frankly Scarlet de la Serve de la Chapelle D’Alexandre and she was bred by Elaine in France (http://chiensdeau.free.fr/BarbetenBresse/)
Via Ula: “Everything went great with my trip to France to meet and greet the new girl to add to our Barbet family. The flight home was smooth gliding and couldn’t have gone any better at the Toronto airport. Our warmest regards to Elaine Fichter, the wonderful breeder of our new pup and Brigitte Raoux the amazing lady whom took care of Frankie and trained her to be the wonderful dog she is today!!! ….Our baby girl is already obediently trained, a swimmer and retriever in the water….”
When I meet a great dog owner, handler, person, etc I rave about them. Anne is one of those people who is incredibly nice, gifted in dog training and handling. She now has her own Barbet, Alba. You can see her blog at: http://barbetalba.web-log.nl If you can’t read dutch you can read the translated version here. However even with a different language, you’ll be amazed at her photos and will fall in love with Alba and the Barbet abilities. Now I need to get Anne to get some video of Alba…
Thanks Anne for sharing! I hope to post more of Anne’s photos as they give such a great insight about what the Barbet can do!
Another person I deeply respect in the barbet dog world is Ezia. Walter and I honeymooned last year in Italy (if you haven’t been to italy make a point to go at some point in your life!!). While there we made a point to stop by La Spezia to meet Ezia and her beautiful Barbet. She lives at the base of Cinque Terre so we got some hiking in between visiting with Ezia and her husband Victor. Both were incredibly hospitable and just fun to hang out with. They held a dinner for us with their friends and only then did we really feel like we had experienced Italy. All the while, Barbet happily sat at our feet.
So before I ramble more on how great Italy is take a moment to check out Ezia’s blog: http://barbetinitalia.blogspot.com/ you’ll probably need a translator for the words, but of course the photos of Barbet speak for themselves.
What is a blog post without a photo? Below is Mata Hari one of Ezia’s grandpuppies we saw in La Spezia. Beautiful dog, no???
Ciao!
Stacy 
Finley, owned by the Barbet Fanciers Club of America VP (barbetfanciers.com) is quite the character. Joanne has been diligent in training, grooming, and socializing him. Now she has ventured Finley into Dock Diving. I can’t wait until Joanne’s article about dock diving as she’s come so far with Finley in such a short time. It is so great to see the Barbet being active in America. In europe it seems everytime you turn around a Barbet is diving, jumping, hunting, and leaping into some great dog activity. Anne in the Netherlands said there were even dog beaches. I can not explain how great it is to see some of these activities being done here in America by Barbet.
Here is Finley taking the big leap:
You can read more about Finley at his blog: http://whirlandtwirlpearl.blogspot.com/
On the west coast there are 6 known Barbet. One, Cody, is my grand puppy and I am so proud of him. His owner, Tricia, keeps me updated frequently and is the Barbet West Coast Liaison. Every person who wishes to have a Barbet I would highly recommend they take the time to connect with a Barbet in their area or when they travel. A couple of weeks ago Tricia took Cody to meet with Tamara, a future Barbet owner. The report I received from Tamara was priceless which I will share below:
Hi Stacy,
I just wanted to let you know that Tricia did bring Cody to meet me (and it turned out that my husband, his salesman, Jerry, and my son wanted to come too). It was so sweet of Tricia to be willing to do that, and Cody made a huge impression. Jerry was captivated and took photos to send to his wife. He said they were both smitten. I told him if they get a Barbet I get visitation since I introduced them to the idea!!
Cody was a love. You can be very proud. I asked Tricia if I could take him for a little walk by myself. I wanted to see if he would “work” for me, and how he was about leaving Tricia. He passed with flying colors. He responded promptly to my commands, and yet kept checking to make sure “mom” was still around. Then Tricia and I took him for a walk with me holding the leash. He was a pleasure to walk. Not pulling or being hyper at all. I was pleased to see that he was captivated by birds. I am big on dogs having function and I hate to see it bred out of them. When we returned, and stood and chatted, Cody just laid down and waited politely. What a nice dog!! I can definitely see a Barbet in my future. Right now I don’t have a spot, as 5 dogs is pretty much my max in the house, but when a spot opens I will be back in touch.
Thanks ever so much for putting me in touch with Tricia.
Tamara
Good thing my husband doesn’t regularly check this blog (if at all) as he HATES his photo taken and loathes it even more when I post them.
It’s sunday so that means I’m editing photos like crazy trying to catch up and my husband is working, playing video games, watching tv, and catching up with a barbet. Here you can see Lia’s favorite Sunday position.
Happy Sunday!!