Flinty McGinty's recent star turn as a cover model for the NZ Dog World Magazine has garnered him quite a bit of attention, both in New Zealand and overseas. His breeders in Japan, Chizuru & Hisayoshi Kadowaki, even shared the cover to their thousands of Facebook followers, they are so proud of how well their boy is doing in New Zealand.
It has also resulted in lots of love and a rather exciting development.
With NZ likely to be stuck at the "Red Light" COVID restrictions for some months to come, most NZ shows have been cancelled (again!) So here we are, sitting in NZ twiddling our thumbs, cancelling motel bookings and admiring our Flint babies.
Meanwhile, across the ditch, our beautiful cover model (and his spectacular pedigree - he's the son of 2014 Westminster BOB winner, Multi INT CH Royal Tuxedo) caught the eye of more than one breeder and resulted in an invitation for Flint to travel to Australia where he will - hopefully - be able to earn his Australian Champion title and stand at stud, something he excels at and won't mind at all!
After much agonising over the decision and several 3-hour-plus phone calls, we decided to entrust him to the care of the delightful and very experienced Miguel Murua from The House of Haggia. Flint will be located in rural Victoria and spoiled rotten, Miguel assures us, by his entire family.
Miguel has a long and distinguished history in the Australian dog show scene, Before seeing the light and realising Chihuahuas are the best breed of all, Miguel bred and exhibited an amazing line of toy poodles in Australia and Europe, including World Champion Nord CH, INT CH, EUR W03, BERL W02, WW03, NO CH, DK CH, SE CH, FI CH, Haggai Sleep To Dream, who was also the 2002 Copenhagen Winner and 2002 DKK Breed Winner.
After taking a break for a few years, to have, you know - a life - Miguel is back and ready to see if he can repeat his World Champion winning success with Chihuahuas. We are so pleased to let Flint contribute to the new line he is developing. He has such a clear vision of what he's after for the breed and shares our ethical and health standards, so it will be very exciting to watch how his lines progress in the coming years.
We are fortunate that sending Flint to Australia won't impact our own breeding program. We have plenty of Flint "on ice" (literally - so much frozen semen saved!) so even while he is in Australia strutting his stuff and "satisfying the ladies", we'll still be able to make Flint babies here. We also have a beautiful boy, Kitaco Ben de la Crème, to fill in for his daddy while he's away and 4 gorgeous girls: Trixie (Kitaco Fibonacci Sequins) and the Golden Girls, Rose, Blanche and Dorothy to carry on his legacy in NZ.
We will really miss him, though. He is so quirky and sweet and has mastered the "begging with a cocked head" pose so well it's impossible to refuse him anything he wants. something Miguel will discover the moment he opens that crate at the airport in Melbourne and McGinty turns his irresistible charms on him.
Enjoy your sojourn in Australia, little man, and be grateful that where you will be living is very picturesque, there are no cane toads to lick (and get high on - or possibly die!), only a few of Australia's 170-odd species of venomous snakes (most of them live around our old home town, Alice Springs, thousands of klms away) and no funnel web spiders (that's a Sydney problem, also over 1000 klm away). We'll miss you, McGinty, more than you will know.
