Astrid Lindgren Litter

7 puppies

0/2 harle
1/1 black
0/1 merle mantle
1/0 fawn merle
0/1 fawn

This litter is very special to me, because it combines my past as a kennel girl in Switzerland with my present and future as a great dane breeder. As a stud dog I chose the black male Yukon Perasperaadastra who I have raised as a puppy and whose parents, sibblings and many of his relatives I know very well. Yukon is from a black to fawn mating and his parents Benni and Ronja were – like he is – mentally stable and anatomically sound dogs, who both reached an age of almost 9 years and didn’t die of typical inherited GD diseases. I have spent a lot of time with them and liked them a lot. Here are some pictures of my time as kennel in Switzerland and with Yukon as a puppy and his parents.

Yukon was 5,7 years old at the time of mating, fully health-tested (HD-A, ED-0, Heart: OK, Ichthyosis gene: free) and has passed the extensive mental test of the Swiss Great Dane Club. He is a family dog and lives together with a child and two small dogs. Of course I also visited him before the mating to see him as an adult dog and if he and Alma get along. Here are some pictures of our short trip to Switzerland 2019.

The combination is a very wide outcross with a COI of 0,00% and an ALC of 97,62% (over 6 generations) and unites fawn, harle and even blue lines from all over Europe and even the USA and South America. The Perasperaadastra breeding line has not been used a lot in the rest of the world, and so I want to preserve these rare genes.

Yukon is still alive now at the age of almost 8 years and perfectly healthy. He has only produced 4 litters and also doesn’t have any popular sires in the first generations.

It was clear that Yukon carries fawn, but the fawn of Alma was hidden for more than 8 generations and so the color combination of this litter was quite a surprise. I definetely wanted to keep a female out of this litter and name her Ronja, after Yukons mother, who I liked a lot and who I have raised two litters with as a kennel girl. And since this litter was born only 2 months after our move to Sweden I got the idea to honor my new home and name the puppies after Astrid Lindgrens fantastic children’s books characters. Here you can see the puppy collages at 8 weeks:

Two of the puppies moved to Germany and the other 5 stayed in Sweden. We already had two puppy meetings and I visited all Swedish pups at home. Of course I am also in constant touch with the Germans 🙂 All puppies have developed nicely and are perfectly healthy and have a good temperament. I wish I could bring all those 7 colorful sibblings together again one day, but this is of course not so easy because of the long distance.

Since this combination is so special to me and Alma offered me this wide range of colors to choose from I kept not only the harlequin girl Ronja, but also co-own her fawn sister Cookie and their black brother Steinar. They both don’t live far away and we meet regularly. Here you can see some pictures of my colorful breeding prospects: