Introduction – Labradors ex Tilia

Our favourite activity – a walk in the woods

We’re Ron and Eleanor. Together with our dogs Riley, Indy and Barney (and our little cat Lexie), we live in a small village in the Bitburg area of Germany. Our house is surrounded by fields and woodland, which makes it perfect for the animals (and us). We love the outdoors and nature, and being able to share that with Riley makes it all the more fun.

ex Tilia and the website

We started sharing pictures and news of Riley on his Facebook Page but this was quite limited in functionality so it was time to make a website for the following reasons.

To be able to share more information and pictures
As a hobby project
And as Indy and later Barney were added to the team a page for Riley alone was not enough.

We also needed to come up with a kennel name.
As we live in (translated from German) “Limewood Drive” and the latin name for Limewood is Tilia we chose the latin version of “From Limewood” – EX TILIA.

A bit of history

We have both always loved animals, growing up with a variety of family pets, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that we truly got to experience the joys of having a dog in our lives together. We’ve had cats for many years, as our professional lives meant we couldn’t take on the responsibility of a dog.

We got our first cats, brother Albert and Arthur, in 2006 when we still lived in the UK. In 2009 we moved to mainland Europe and the boys came with us. This was the best thing that we could have done for them as the quiet rural area we lived in meant they could safely explore the country side and do what cats do best. A few years later we found Lexie as a 3 month old kitten outside the office in the middle of nowhere. We suspect that she had been abandoned. We took her in and nursed her back to good health and gave her the option to go her own way. By that time she had already figured out it wasn’t that bad to live with humans and she’s been with us ever since.

In 2011 we were given the opportunity to take a Labrador pup from friends. As we were then in a position to look after a dog we agreed, and a few weeks later the pup traveled from Wales and Ffion (Sian of Lux) joined our family. Little did we know what we were in for, but she brightened up our lives with her always happy attitude. We learnt a lot from her and she opened up our world to this unbelievable breed of dog. Sadly, her time with us was only too short. At 1 year old she was diagnosed with a heart defect and although she led a practically normal and very happy life, her heart gave in at the age of 3 and half and she peacefully passed away in the night. Our world was shattered and left empty. In her short time she touched the lives of many and brought happiness wherever she went and to whomever she met and enriched our lives in ways that only dog owners can relate to.

It didn’t take long for us to realise that living without a dog was not an option, but we also didn’t want to just replace Ffion. And so our search began for another Labrador puppy girl.

After an extensive search, we met Dagmar Eck from the Labradore vom Storkenbusch kennel. As luck would have it, her Tess had just mated and was expecting a litter in about 6 weeks. It was very important for us to meet the mother dog, as it was something we didn’t get to do with Ffion. What is there not to like about Tess? Such a beautiful creature, both physically and in character. Equally as charismatic are Dagmar’s other dogs Amy and Paula. We left feeling excited, hopeful, but also thoroughly vetted by Dagmar – a quality we appreciated and consider to be important in a responsible breeder. Above all, before considering us, Dagmar needed to be assured that we could provide for the pup in a way which suits the breed. So now we waited for our little girl.

Riley

A little girl wasn’t to be though. Tess gave birth to a healthy litter of 8 pups, 6 dogs and 2 bitches on 30th June 2015. Dagmar could only offer us a boy. A boy would likely be bigger, stronger and maybe a little more of a handful, but we felt comfortable that things would work out.

8 weeks later Riley, or Dutch Scooter vom Storkenbusch, joined our family.

And that was the start of a new adventure

As our little man started to grow up, it became apparent that he was quite special. Of course every dog owner feels the same way about their pet, so we didn’t read too much into that. However, more and more people started to mention showing and doing field training to us. Thanks to the comments and support of those people, this is where our we took our first steps in the proper world of the Labrador Retriever – something we sadly didn’t have the opportunity to do with Ffion.

Riley has proven to be very successful in the show ring, does extremely well at search work and enjoys dummy.

Indy

On the 28th March 2017 our second Labrador pup joined the family. Once again we are priviledged to be entrusted with another puppy from the Vom Storkenbusch kennel – Riley’s (half)brother Indy (Endeavour Morse vom Storkenbusch).

Indy was selected as a playmate for Riley. Although we would of course also see how he did at in the show ring and other activities the main reason to get him was as companion for Riley.
Well…. he certainly excelled at that. The two became best buddies in no time. Indy is a completely different dog to Riley – they couldn’t be more opposite but it works well with those two. Furthermore, Indy himself also excelled at showing and is now Youth Champion and Champion and continues to love the attention he gets when he’s in the ring. He also loves a bit agility and is proving to be pretty good with dummy work as well.