About us

About Chatayan, village Čataj and other.

Leonberger and Us

At the beginning of my and I dare to say also of the whole family life with leonbergers was only a chance. I had never been interested in dogs but ... I liked a dog - now I know it was chow-chow. I asked my colleague, who knew a lot about dogs, what was the name of a brown furry dog which looked like a lion. I did not say anything about the size of the dog and so he told me that it was leonberger. And so it all began ...

It was in January 1995 when I was trying to find leonberger in advertising newspapers. I did not find any, so I contacted Mr. Gazo, a breeder of leonbergers, whether he would have puppies. He said he would not. It was the end of my efforts.

After half a year Mr. Gazo called to say he had puppies ... He was a full-blooded dog called Bony Artemis. A niece of Mr. Gazo called him Benny and so this name remained to him. He was the dog of a good nature, reasonable but not perfectly bred due to my short (if any) experience with breeding of dogs. Benny was the first dog in my life. Unfortunately, he is not with us any more because of an unlucky crash with a car. In this case I met with arrogance and poor ethics of the driver who behaved repulsively. Benny left us on 1 st September 2004. He remained and will remain in our hearts forever.

At the moment when Benny was leaving us in my arms I knew that we would have a new leonberger. I found newly born puppies through internet. I had difficulties to persuade Ms. Novakova, their owner, about my honest intention with a puppy but finally I was successful. And so after two months, particularly on 17 th November 2004, we brought a bitch called Fiore April from the Czech Republic. She is the leonberger of absolutely different nature. She is very vivacious. I have to say that I would have problems with her if I did not have several year experience with Benny. She is now well bred and she is still making progress. She also grew into beauty.

People often ask me what kind of breed Fiore April is. This means that majesty and beauty of leonbergers grabs the attention of people. On the other hand, this also means that leonbergers are not very well known and are not wide spread. Because of this our breeding station Chatayan wants to take care of leonberger puppies and improve the quality of Slovak breeding. We are enthusiastic and resolved and we hope that we will manage to do this with a bit of luck. Nowadays we are looking for an appropriate partner for Fiore April. The decision process is complicated and until the last moment I will not know whether my decision was right or wrong. But this is life and we cannot influence it, maybe just coordinate it a bit. Soon we should have a new arrival and we are very happy about it.

Now it is a right time to tell you why the breeding station Chatayan was established. It is because leonberger became a symbol of loyalty, majesty, beauty and love for us.

In conclusion, I do not want to write about the welcome of my Fiore April when I come back home from work every day. All of you, who are reading these lines, can imagine it really well. No words are needed. So let´s our - your leonbergers bring joy to our lives and let´s them grow into beauty.