Anara Cavaliers

Glamour, Soundness, Health, and Temperament

Welcome!

My goal is to get it all:  beauty and glamour, sound structure, general and genetic health, and fearless, outgoing temperament.

Take a look at The Girls to see how close I've come so far -- and a look at Puppies to see what I'm hoping to achieve in the whelping box in the near future!

Not every girl of mine is exactly what I want . . . perfection is tough to get, as you can imagine!  In the show ring, little things matter a lot -- a bit of white showing in the corner of one eye, a couple of freckles in the wrong spot, hocks set a trifle too high, a tail carried too high, whatever.  But every single one of my girls has sound structure, a pretty head, and a nice temperament.  Breeding is like slow-motion gambling:  every litter might give you that totally flawless puppy . . . that's what keeps you going!  Even when it gets pretty stressful -- see the "What's it like to be a breeder?" page.

Every girl of mine has finished at least one performance title -- usually by the time she's a year old. Rally is my favorite performance sport:  easy and fun, and you can train for it without joining an Obedience club or having any special equipment.  My Eve earned her first two Rally Novice legs by the time she was six months and two days old!  You can't show them until they're six months old, so you can see I had her in the ring the very day she was old enough to show.  Her second time in the ring, she got first place in the Novice class.

The girls are all so different to show, it's really something.  Sometimes the hardest part for me is remembering which dog prefers which down signal.  Pippa's got the most titles; if I don't have any time at all to work with her before a show, she can be trusted to do just fine in the ring with five minutes of practice the morning of the show.  Plus, she can learn a new exercise in 20 minutes, right before I walk into the Rally ring, and then go on to do it perfectly.  She wins all her own stuffed toys, which is handy, because she also destroys toys promptly.  She loves to prove that any toy can be ripped to pieces, even by an elegant fluffy small dog.

Genetics has been a hobby of mine for years, so I hope you'll enjoy exploring that part of the site.

Also, I write fantasy novels.  The Floating Islands was a Junior Library Guild selection and made the best-of-2012 list from Kirkus, and all of mine have garnered excellent reviews.  If you like fantasy, then hey, check out my other website!

Rachel Neumeier