How Hugo came to Finland

This story tells how Hugo came to Finland. At first there was only Rum'N'Black and Rum'N'Black.

It all started when we got another great idea = we _must_ get a tricolour male from England and from kennel Brilyn. Wewere together with Päivi both very fond of Ch Brilyn Rum'N' Black and his beautiful offspring. So there had to be Rum'N'Black in our imports pedigree!

That's when the troubles started.
We couldn't find an e-mail address to Brian Hawkins. We talked with people who had imported dogs from there and it was obvious that we had to start to save money... one should visit there at first, the englishmen are very accurate to whomthey sell puppies and that's good!

So we decides to write to Brian! Yes, we just decided, that letter hasn't been written yet... who knows, maybe we eventually will ;-)

Then we found Houston (Brilyn Black Inspiration) from Holland... he was just made for us... So we asked in Häkkis-english by e-mail where, how and when there would be Houston's puppies available and to which kind of bitch?

We were informed (this happend in autumn 2001) that there wouldn't be any Houston's puppies under affix Malouine's and a few phonenumbers to breeders who might have Houston's puppies...we didn't call.

We started regularly study Malouine-homepages. Time went by until... one day I interpret (Malouine-pages are in dutch) that "Chanou has been mated to Houston" (this combination had been made before and we had admired these puppies and fret about not having contacted Anke before).

I called to Päivi in this point (she was shopping, I think): "now there is Houston's puppies coming and to that bitch... in or out?".

She was ready to come along and said, that it wouldn't be a bad idea if the tricolour male (who's home was considered to be here in Latovainio-city) would come with her blue merle sister... maybe!

I send away our before-sended-questions again only with added comments like "hey, we are truly interested!".

We e-mailed mostly with Marijke (who lives with Houston). You can't get in touch with Anke via e-mail so quickly. Then the waiting started and it wasn't clear if Anke was willing to sell us a puppy.

In some point we got annonced via Marijke that selling to Finland wasn't impossible, if only the puppy was picked up not later than 9 weeks old.

The planning of a trip began.

There were quite a few plans, and they were smiled and even laughed at by various of people... who says that you can't just drive your Toyota to Holland?
We could
- fly there ourselves
- drive there in our own car
- take a ship
- ask if he could travel in our friends truck
- and so on and so on.

In this point we thought that we both should go and pick up the puppy. And we wouldn't like him to travel in hold at all.

In the beginning of april 2002 there came an e-mail from Marijke: puppies were born 3.4., 3 tricolour males, 1 merle male, 4 merle bitches, 1 tricolour bitch and an recommandatoin to call to Anke, she hadn't decided yet who's gonna get the puppies.
CALL! HELP!

I called again to Päivi (who was shopping again) and we decided to put our hopes into Annika and operation Come to help up Annika. I asked her to visit us IMMEDIATELY and call to Anke to Holland.
Anke was a very nice person indeed.
- unfortunately there was a 4-year-long range to merle bitches, so we didn't get one
- a tricolour male puppy waspossible, if he's picked up before he's 9 weeks old, Anke is leaving for a holiday at the time and one hasn't to pick it up in person
- she won't sell a dog to a kennel, she wanted to know how my dogs are living. Well, everybody who has visited our house knows that my dogs are from top to bottom family-dogs and always on the way.
- she wanted to know if there is some restrictions about CEA here in Finland to imported dogs (you can't import a dogwith the mildest Ch to for example Germany)

HIP-HIP-HOORAY... there's going to be a tricolour male for us!!!

Again the waiting started!
In some point we managed to settle the trip so, that Karen (who co-owns a collie with Päivi) flies to Holland (that's her jobs, she's an air-hostess) to pick up little Hans (as we called him at the time). Karen had flied with a dog before, so she had all the equipments as well. Then started waiting again, this time we waited how Karen's shifts would take place in late may and beginning of june.

Cea-reports came from Holland, they all were CEA-clear as puppies, great!

Finally we got all settled: Karen and Anke would meet Saturday June 1st 10.00 am (Finnish time) in Amsterdam airport. Karen had a couple of hours free between the flights, she had a day off just to pick up Hans-Hugo.

And again we waited:
1.6.2002 came and it was hot, almost painfully hot. Päivi's dogs were shown in Ikaalinen... so I bend myself straight to Helsinki-Vantaa airport via Ikaalinen. Karen and Hugo were supposed to land to the airport in the afternoon. We got SMS-messages in the way and finally the relief came: they were on the plane coming to home, with the puppy with her!! How wonderful... and just bit faster we could go, and a bit more.

We got lost at the airport, almost got into an car accident, but finally we were at the right gate at the right time. Then they came, Karen and little-Hugo in her arms ;-)

That puppy was so sweet as a puppy can be... was it the long wait or what, but at the moment we felt really great! We took a few photos and Karen told us what Anke had said to her and then we headed ourselves towards Latovainio-City... and it was still very very hot.

In the evening at home little-Hugo started immediately getting to know his new family and got grinned at the first time when he got lost to the wrong food bowl.
So vigorous, happy and sweet little man.

I sended e-mails to Anke and Marijke to Holland, as they propably were waiting for my mail this time ;-) Everything is allright, Hugo is safely arrived to his new home!

This story isn't the full story, there were plenty of more e-mails, phone calls, checkings, confirmations and so on. There was little dramatics still at the airport, but he got to the plane as planned...

My Mika Häkkinen-english has improved and Hugo has been a positive surprise from head to toes... and of course we have planned something more to come, but about them we are dead quiet now :-D

These were written by Seija