Janine sent me a terrific update near the middle of March. Janine and Stefan have Maya, a tremendous young daughter of Kamp and Bram. When it comes to hiking there is no better companion dog for a young woman to have than a Norwegian Elkhound. Maya comes from one of the greatest Moose hunting lineages in the world. She can trace her roots back to one of the most famous and recognized Norwegian Elkhounds of all time. That famous lineage is from Mini G, who has no end to titles, and was still in competition at 10 1/2 years old when he competed in the the Huge Exhibition in Hamar to be voted the Best of Breed and was the Norwegian winner in 2001, in a class of all younger dogs, a huge accomplishment. His fabulous career ended with him voted as 6th best of all in the Group 5 of all Elkhound Breeds. This is about as good as you can get. It’s no wonder that Maya is barking Moose for Janine at 7 months.

I want to thank Janine for these awesome photos she sent down, and I know the effort it takes to get great photos like this, so I truly appreciate the time and extra effort she invested to get these. As you can see from these awesome photos Maya is a beautiful Norwegian Elkhound, she takes a lot of the Black Silver from her fathers side and can balance that with all the stature and composure of her mother Kamp. When your looking for a perfect representation of an Elkhound, Janine has just presented us with it in Maya. Thank you Janine.

Hello there Merv!

I just wanted to check in and let you know how Maya is doing. Life with her has been a blast! She is so full of life and energy. She is always ready to join us on an adventure or just cuddle on the couch. She is currently playing rough with Stefan in the lounge, but always knows when to stop.

We recently traveled with Maya on a week trip to Jasper. She absolutely loved all the new trails, but suffered from a bit of stress diarrhoea for a part of the trip. She’s still getting used to traveling long distances, but always up for the challenge. Anything to be with us! We came across quite a bit of wildlife – deer/elk/big horn sheep. Let’s just say we were glad that she was on leash. She was ready to show them who was in charge!

I had quite an adventure with her recently at our community forest. Every now and again some moose saunter through there and I’m sure they see their fair share of dogs – they’re pretty tame for wild animals. But I’m sure they weren’t prepared for a young elkhound and her first try at a hunt! I was just walking along and suddenly off Maya goes into the bushes. She starts barking and I know it must be some animal. Now, it was still deep snow back then. I wouldn’t get to her too easily without much of a hassle. So I decide to walk around that section of the forest to try to call her through. Maya would have none of it. My job in her mind was to come over and help her finish things with the moose. After about 10-15 min of trampling and heaving through deep snow, I am about 6 meters from the moose and Maya about 1 meter. She had no fear! She was darting and barking keeping the moose at bay. Only after the moose charged her one more time (he wasn’t at all serious; still chewing on a branch) she finally ran over so I could leash her and she walked perfectly with me back to the car. In her mind, she had done her job perfectly!

I must admit her recall was impeccable before 6 months of age, but she is definitely developing her own ideas and beginning to operate more independently. I had to watch all your recall videos again to rework our strategy. She gets lots of training including formal obedience training which she is really doing well at, but Stef and I had to agree to be more patient. We wait longer after each command to give her space to complete it instead of repeating it too frequently. She knows the commands and is willing to participate, but would also like to quickly sniff under that branch and look at the squirrel in the tree. I knew your website would have the answers we were looking for – I don’t think anyone knows the elkhound like you do.

We have been talking quite a bit about this and Stefan and I agree that we want to get another elkhound. We have fallen in love with this breed. Maya is everything we were looking for in a dog. We would really like a male. I see you are breeding Takoda and Kamp at the end of the year and although I am sure all the puppies are already spoken for, we thought we’d mention that we are interested just in case. You speak so highly of Takoda so any chance to get one of his sons would truly be an honour.

Finally, a friend of mine is a photographer and she jumped at the opportunity to take some pictures for me. I’m sure you’ll really like them – I think she really captured the beauty of an elkhound! I’ve attached some of my favourites.

Hope you are well and have a great night!

Janine (and Stefan)