Aristos

Quodian’s Aristos was born on January 5, 2008 in the Netherlands at Quodian’s Vizsla Kennel (formerly in St. Willebrord, now located in Oudenbosch). His sire is Dutch Champion, Luxemburg Champion and German Champion Jakabhegyi Vadasz Arasz and his dam Ceglédi Serif Apc (Yenny).

Ari’s mission in life is to become a therapy dog. His gentle, empathetic nature and peacemaking behavior among people and animals lead us to think he will do well in such a role. He has already helped to socialize dogs raised under very unfavorable conditions and helped a number of people to overcome their fear of dogs.

When we began showing him in the Netherlands and Germany (achieving the status of German Junior Champion for the VDH in December 2008), the reactions to his character, conformation and coat were very positive, and we were urged by the chief breeding officer for the German Vizsla club and others to consider hunting qualifications for him so that he would be available for breeding. Ari has a super nose and is very focused and careful in his work, and has helped us immensely in familiarizing ourselves with our local hunting grounds, pointing things out to us that we might otherwise have overlooked as greenhorn hunters.

In April of 2009, Ari was bred to Quodian’s Wanda (Wagga), a wonderful young hunter who lives in northern Denmark, and 6 beautiful puppies (3 males and 3 females) were born on June 15, 2009. Their handsome son Daniavizsla’s Barack is now a member of our family, and keeps his father on his toes. More information about Barack (and his siblings) can be found on his own page here on the blog.

The past year has been a busy one for Ari. In addition to welcoming his son as well as our Deutsch Drahthaar Ajax into the family and establishing himself as the leader of the pack (and a super father and role model for Barack and Ajax), Ari passed his companion dog test in December 2009 with flying colors and is currently in training to become a therapy dog. In autumn this year I myself will begin the training program in animal-assisted therapy at the Institute of Social Learning with Animals in Lindwedel, near Hannover, so that I will be a proper team leader for Ari – I am very excited about this, and greatly looking forward to working in a team with my pride and joy! We are also working on his adult champion title in the show ring. In his spare time he enjoys hunting games, dummy training, learning new tricks, swimming, and socializing with his four-legged and two-legged friends. We are immensely grateful to Lies van Essen for giving us our beautiful Aristos, who really does live up to his name (Aristos means “the best” in Greek), and cannot imagine life without him.

Quodian’s Aristos is in excellent health as his certification of HD-free status and eye health attest.