We are Andre and Diana Kok from Kennel: The Astonishing from Medemblik (NL).
We’ve had Dalmatian dogs since 1993. We currently have 3 Dalmatians: Seven, Lily and Ivy, and one German Mastiff, Florence. When we had to put our oldest Dalmatian down when he was 14 years old, which was almost 2 years ago, we only had Florence and Seven. Two dogs was not enough for us, and we got the urge again. So, we started to look around on the internet and saw that Arne and Femke had a litter. Nice, we thought!
We had already seen father Odin (Perdita’s Sparkling Star) at a show, and thought he was a very beautiful and nice dog. We first asked if they any female dogs were available, which luckily was the case! We regularly take our dogs to shows, so we took a very “show technical” look at the puppies, and they looked very nice! Normally, we don’t care for brown, but they only had brown puppies available, and miraculously the brown ones caught our attention.
So we went to Germany. We already knew Arne and Femke from the shows. Now let’s see how they live. Beautiful of course. It was nice weather and we sat outside. It was very cosy. The puppies looked good. We thought two of the brown female dogs were very beautiful. It was a difficult choice. We laid down on the ground and “inspected” them from head to toe.
Eventually, we decided to choose Dalmacademy’s Dutch Delicious. We like it when the pedigree name sounds a little bit like the name we call her, so we called her Lily!
We could pick her up when she was 8 weeks. Ohh, that’s so much fun. We’ve had litters before ourselves, but picking up a puppy without all the worries and tensions beforehand is nice for a change. She screamed the entire drive back. We went to friends who have a Dalmatian, and she loved him right away. It gave her a chance to stretch her legs and hopefully get tired. She didn’t!
When she got home, she met Florence and Seven. They are always very sweet with puppies, so that wasn’t a problem. She didn’t think Florence was too big, ha, ha. It was raining during the first couple of days, but she didn’t care about that at all. She loved to go outside and she was quickly housebroken. It was in the summertime, so the door was open all day. We’ve had many dogs and puppies before, so the puppy time wasn’t new to us. We always love this period. We took her everywhere and she was very easy.
She still is. She is very calm in and around the house and is very excited when we have people over. She will come walking with a pillow in her mouth. She loves the dog walking area and she’s sweet to all dogs. Every week, Andre rides his bike to my parents with Seven and Lily, which is 6 kilometres. Lily can outrun Seven, so you can see who’s the younger dog. Although she loves cats….. chasing them! When we were on vacation, she was at the doggy sitter in the middle of the village. There are a lot of cats there, so a walk through the village is “hard work”.
She’s also so funny. She always lays on her back with her legs in the air. You can put her in every position, she just lays still. Her favourite spot is in Andre’s lap when he’s on the couch, and she loves to lay on his shoulder!!
Last year, we had a litter of our own with Seven. Lily thought it was a lot of fun and she was very sweet to the puppies. She let them walk over her and she played with them. We think (we know) she’s going to be a sweet mommy!
From this nest, we kept a male dog, Ivy. He is now 1 year old. Ivy and Lily are two peas in a pot. Always having fun, running around outside and playing. Ivy is allowed to do almost everything, but Lily is in charge.
We took lily to the show from the start, first as a visitor, then in the Baby, Puppy, Junior and now Intermediate category. She’s really doing great. Last year, we went to the club show in Denmark, 2 shows, 2 days in a row. Seven could become Danish champion, so we thought: let’s just bring all our Dalmatians. Lily won both shows, two days in a row in the Junior category, awesome!! We are proud of our brown rascal.
She will probably have her first litter next year. First it’s Seven’s turn, so she can play “aunt” again.
We are very happy with our Lily, and everyone who sees her, thinks she’s beautiful. Even the people who prefer black dogs say they do like this brown one!
Thank you Arne and Femke, for this sweetheart!