World Breeders - Leeland - 2004

Their breed is based on English bloodlines such as Sumburgh, Lythwood, Riverhill, Lysebourne, Stornaway, Francehill, Stationhill, Kyleburn and Forestland. In a period of 31 years time they imported 21 shelties from England (all became CC-/resCCwinners – 19 are made up). They are listed below:

At the moment Aud Jorun and Helge have five shelties, living with them like family members. They have their own dog garden and their own dog room, which is in fact the PC-room of the Lies. In the evenings they share the TV room with them.  

The dogs that live with Aud Jorun and Helge today are Ch Marklin Wild Jazz, Ch Kindergate the Joker, Ch Stornaway Sawney Bean and the young dog Shelridge Starmaker (res CC). The fifth dog in their home is Leeland Play On Billy (6 months), who is co-owned with their son Dag Christer. Their age varies from 6 months to 12 years. They also have five bitches on breeding terms by friends. Aud Jorun and Helge have never been big breeders as they mostly have had one or two litters from the bitches they have on breeding terms.

Living a very active life five dogs is the maximum where it comes to spending quality time with them and enjoying them. Fortunately Aud Jorun has during all this years been able to take two of the dogs with her at work in the Kennel Club, so they could meet other people and also other dogs during the day….

This year the 7^th generation Leeland shelties was born. Sire is N Ch Leeland the Golden Viking, that goes back on Leeland breeding on his dam side. Dam is their youngest English imported bitch Ch Stornaway Sunlit Rose. At this stage (six months) the puppies have much from their mother but you can also see influences from their father and grandfather and even from earlier Leeland dogs in the pedigree.

Aud Jorun and Helge:

‘It is interesting to see that Shelties looks as a “Rosco”-puppy, a “Flame”-puppy, a “Mac”-puppy or a “Joker”-puppy. When thinking back on our foundation bitches the shelties on our two Sumburgh lines looked very even after three – four generations of breeding. Shelties on our Riverhill-line and from our Norwegian bitch Cover Girl also had something in common. When reading Cover Girls pedigree you see that her grandfather was Riverhill Rolling Home.
We breed for type and quality. So when we are looking for a new dog to import from England, we make up our mind what we are going to look for and what lines we want. It was not as simple as just ‘buying’ a dog. It often takes a year or two to get ‘the right dog’.’ 
 

Leeland 'Mac' with five children. Photo taken in 1991 when Ch Stationhill Speculator (left on photo) got Prize of Honour for a progeny class (only one of these was bred at Leeland).

Aud Jorun and Helge Lie don’t stick to line breeding. They breed from lines that have the type, close to the English standard. They don’t believe in importing dogs that are too close related to the dogs they own. They just won’t take the risk of double up faults. Pedigrees are very important.

Aud Jorun and Helge:

‘When reading pedigrees we can ‘see’ most of the dogs in front of us, as we have studied Lines and Families and have closely followed breeding in the U.K. during the years. We can see how the type inherits and have a feeling of the way this special dog would go on with our own dogs in Norway. We also try to learn about faults in the lines that we don’t want to bring into our lines, or want to double up.  So by ‘reading’ pedigrees names come to life in pictures in our mind.

We have found it most important to keep in contact with breeders in the U.K. and if needed we asked them for advice about what lines the dogs we have imported from them could go with. In fact a breeder of a dog knows best what this special dog should/should not be bred to. In our opinion we all have to work together to do our best for the breed. So asking advice is very important, but it is also very important to give back information when it comes to the bitch who is going to mated. So it’s a ‘long distance’ co-operation when talking about breeding – but very, very useful. I would like to add that the British breeders that we are in contact with really care for the breed, they love the breed the way we do!’    

Leeland puppies paying a visit (2002).  The two puppies are by Ch Kindergate the Joker ex Ch Stornaway Sunlit Rose. The adults are from left: Ch Marklin Wild Jazz, Ch Stornaway Sawney Bean, Ch Stornaway Sunlit Rose, Ch Leeland Applerose and Ch Kindergate the Joker.

As told Aud Jorun and Helge stick to the English standard.

In October 2000 Helge Lie represented Norway and the Norwegian Kennel Club during the ESSC Conference. Main subject there was the English/ American standard. At this occasion Helge stated that he felt the American sheltie to be almost another breed. Now it’s four years later. The influence of ‘American’ shelties has increased. What’s your opinion Helge with respect to this tendency?

The video “Visit to British breeders and British shows 1972 – 2000” is known to a lot Sheltie owners. This 3 hours video shows many famous dogs and well-known Sheltie kennels in Britain during more than 30 years. Aud Jorun and Helge have visited Britain regularly for almost 30 years and during these visits they have registered lots of dogs on video. They have been to Crufts nearly every year since 1972 and on this video you will find cuts from 16 of these years. The main reason for making this video is to attribute to the cultural history of our breed.

Helge Lie is not only a well respected breeder but also a judge with a world wide reputation. When and for what reasons did you decide on judging? 

Helge:
‘I started my judging career with shelties and collies in 1976. The reason was that I had a great interest for those breeds, specially for shelties. Later I found a lot of interest in other breeds too and it lead to the fact that I am now authorised for nearly half of the breeds we have in Scandinavia.’

Looking back, what has remained with you all along?

Helge:
‘Judging in Australia was a very interesting experience. The dogs and the people was fantastic. I can say that we were very impressed by the sheltie people, a.o. as there were so many people who came to the airport to say goodbye when we left again for Norway after our visit. I also would like to mention my judging in Russia. I met people who had bred shelties and collies up to the standard we have in the rest of Europe.’

Helge has been judging for a long time and in many countries. What has it learned you?

Helge:
‘Comparing to earlier years the presentation of the dogs in many countries has changed to the better. That is also the attitude of the exhibitors. Since the U.K. is the home country for our breed, English breeders and exhibitors are for the rest of Europe what we have been looking for during many years. Serious continental breeders are often visiting English breeders and shows. The most popular places to go to are Crufts and the big breed club shows.’

TOP 3 SHELTIES TODAY

I asked Helge to select a top 3 of his favourite shelties today.
Helge: ‘During the time as a judge and a visitor to a lot of breeders in England and the rest of Europe, I had had the opportunity to see many good shelties. In fact so many that it is difficult to point on a few.

Sheltie breeders too have got to deal with health problems within the breed. I asked Aud Jorun and Helge about the policy breeders have with respect to health issues.

Aud Jorun and Helge:
‘The most important is to be honest to yourself and to learn as much as possible about health and the special problems in our breed. It is important to have the puppies eye-checked at seven weeks, and we at Leeland have all our stud dogs eye-checked every year and also only breed with dogs that are HD free.  
The Norwegian Kennel Club has information on their website for their members on the link “DogWeb”. All members can get information there about the litters, their pedigrees, their show results and health. Here you can find information about HD results and eye results too. This information is very important for breeders as well as for the breed club. The breed club also publishes each year all results from eye tests and HD results and advices about what to breed from and what not to breed from regarding faults.
Our opinion is not to be too fanatic but to get as well informed as possible to avoid to double up faults. It is important to breed for type and quality and not to ‘drown yourself’ in faults.’

PRA

I know PRA is one of the health problems that has got Aud Jorun and Helges full attention. It’s my pleasure to give them the opportunity to emphasize the importance of (the research on) PRA.  

Aud Jorun and Helge:
‘When talking about PRA: It was like a bomb when the PRA (GPRA) cases came into open in Norway, Sweden and Finland - but it was very important to use this in a positive way for the whole breed. We feel proud that the Norwegian Shetland Sheepdog Club took the big decision to make it possible to start the work to find the DNA for PRA. This research will be done by the veterinary/professor Frode Lingaas at the Norwegian Veterinarian Highschool. This research is valuable to all breeders of shelties - not only in Norway, Sweden and Finland but to the whole world. 

The PRA-fund has been supported by the Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Dutch, the English Shetland Sheepdog Club, Midwestern Shetland Sheepdog Clubs, the Shetland Sheepdog Club of North Wales and Victoria Inc., Australia. The PRA-fund has also got money from the Norwegian Kennel Club, from two Norwegian private foundation donated to the Norwegian Veterinaryan Highschool and from a lot of breeders and sheltie owners. 

Dogs with PRA get blind – so as a real breed lover we should all work together for this research to find the DNA for PRA.  When we succeed we just need a blood sample to know if our Sheltie is a PRA-carrier or not. This is what we all work for isn't it?
From the pedigrees of the PRA dogs found in our part of the world (one bred in Norway, four in Finland and eighteen in Sweden) we know the names of some PRA-carriers as both mother and father of a PRA-case are carriers. We know for sure that the PRA came from dogs far back in the pedigrees and that also tells us that this is a problem that concerns all breeders in all countries.´ 

We need your help!

All together the PRA-fund based in the Norwegian Shetland Sheepdog Club at this stage (December 2004) is N kr 700.000 (about Euro 89.608). We are soon coming up to Christmas time. And as it very common to give gifts so we hope all sheltie owners around the world feel that they can be able to bring this research forward by giving money to the PRA-fund. You find the address for this at http://www.nssk.no/PRA/pra.html.´

As world breeders Aud Jorun and Helge Lie have had many successes. Is there anything they still want to achieve or accomplish?  

Aud Jorun and Helge:
‘The last years we have not been so active in the show ring since Helge has been judging quite a lot. Talking about the future is looking back first. During all these years we have learned that it is not the most important to win. It is also very important to feel for the breed and be happy if a good sheltie wins! In our opinion it is of great value for a breed that there are different winners at shows. This enables cooperation in the interest of the breed. It is of course great to see a beautiful dog win but perhaps her or his beauty would be even more if he/she doesn’t compete at every show. We talk from experience from the years we competed very much with our dogs. It was of course great to win with our top show dogs, but when we realised that other show people didn’t like to see our ‘Rosco’ in the catalogue on each occasion we stopped showing him after the show he won Nordic Winner 84. By that time Rosco was 5 years old. He could have won a lot more but we realised the importance of ‘keeping friends’ in the breed. We also had other good dogs to show and of course we were proud on shelties we bred ourselves. However, we realised that the most important was to bring the breed forward, so when a dog/bitch only needed a last CC to win at a NKKs show we only took that special dog/bitch only to a NKK Show. To be honest we weren’t the only ones who did this. It was quite common for show people at that time.  We can mention that we stick to this during the last 20 years and can mention Kindergate the Joker (N Ch NV96’98’02) imported from England in 1996 – we showed him for the first time at the NKK Int Show Norwegian Winner Show in November 1996 and he won his first CC, BOB, BIG and 3BIS. He became a Champion in August 1997 at his fourth show. Joker is still with us and he is a great personality – Aud Jorun thinks ‘he owns her’. The last time we showed him was in august 2002 at an international NKK Show where he won BOB and NV02 title and he also qualified for Crufts at this show. 

The plans for the future are to continue in the right way as we have started on but whát the future brings we’ll see. As told we are not so active in the ring anymore but we hope that our son Dag Christer will be interested in showing shelties as we now have the 6 months old Leeland Play On Billy (the 7^th bred Leeland) registered on him. Billy has been to an all breed puppy show where he won BOB-puppy and 3BIG-puppy – so fingers crossed.’ 

Aud Jorun and Helge Lie - Leeland Shelties Norway 

Thank you Aud Jorun and Helge, for having enabled me to make this lovely world breeders' portrait. Ineke.