Dubhbruja Flatcoats

About our Dubhbruja

Our Story

We are Lea and Justin, We share our lives with our wonderful gang of flatties and we live in the beautiful Grampian countryside between Fraserburgh and Peterhead. We moved here from Cheshire in 2009 prompted by the need for more space and a place better suited to a gang of flatcoats.

Not often you move the length of the country for your dogs but my Dad had a farm here so we knew the area well. The house we found is the ideal position for the dogs but it and it's outbuildings needed total renovation, we've built extensions but it's still a work in progress, especially the outbuildings. The dogs love it though!!

NethertonWe are only a few mins from the links and the gorgeous Grampian coastline and a beach with barely anyone else on it most of the time. At the front we overlook the Loch Of Strathbeg (RSPB nature reserve that gets a huge number of the worlds pink footed geese arrive every winter), it's lovely and even on a windy, stormy, rainy day it has appeal.

Loch of StrathbegAs having a whole pack of dogs in the house is a bit of a feat they take turns throughout the day and take turns to sleep in at night. They also have heated kennels to sleep in where they have the same great view and they 4 acres of paddocks and garden to play in. They all love their cosy beds and getting some of the girls out of theirs is a real challenge some days.

The dunes

Our puppies are born in the house and remain there for the first 5- 5.5 weeks of their life in their own room with mum. They're well used to a busy household and all that entails. When they start to go over the side of the box at about 5 weeks they move house to a special puppy pen that has been fitted out for them with a heated sleeping pod, inside run and their own play yard. They get out to the paddocks where they get some wonderful views and loads of space to play. They get to meet all the visitors, delivery men, posties and generally greet anyone who calls.

A bit of History for you!

I always had lots of pets of one kind or another as I grew up. Granddad was a farmer as was Dad and when Josh was around 10 months old we visited Dad on his farm herein Aberdeenshire where we met our first two flat coated retrievers, a big beautiful dog and a lovely little bitch we were struck by their beauty and elegance also by their endless enthusiasm and obvious love for just about everybody, they were so interested in Josh and it was obivous that they felt the same and we never worried that they would hurt him. I didn't see a flat coat again for about 10 years until it turned out that Dad's partner had two (the parents of our girls Bramble, Willow and Ziva) Justin and I were instantly captivated by them all over again and spent the entire holiday just hanging out with the dogs never actually believing that we'd be lucky enough to own one. Justin had never had a pet of his own, until we had our old cross breed rescue Theo who is sadly no longer with us, he was a stray and came with his own set of problems which we researched and dealt with as we went along, it wasn't always easy owning him but he was always a loyal, loving boy to us and he taught us a lot about dogs with problems.

Anyway several visits later and much to our delight Abby was in pup and actually gave birth to the litter while we were there. This was the first time I played midwife to a Flatty and out of this litter came the lovely Bramble who duly arrived home in Cheshire. As the months went by we grew more and more impressed with her lovely nature and fabulous looks, I found myself staring at her all the time she was so beautiful!

I rember reading that flatties are like pheasant and you always needed a brace! And sure enough 18 months after Bramble was born we decided that she really did need a friend and on cue Abby produced another litter and along came Willow, so different from Bramble in many ways but a wonderful character, very pretty and much slower to mature physically than Bram.

After much thought and visiting shows, talking to other breeders and letting them see our girls we were convinced by a very well thought of lady in the flatcoat world that we should mate Bramble and later Willow. Wanting to do things properly we decided we should have an Affix, after much debate DubhBruja was settled on (pronounced DooBrewa), Dubh, which is Gaelic for black (a nod to the girls Scottish heritage) and Bruja, which is Spanish for sorceress/witch because Bramble bewitched us.

Now the proud owner of a kennel club affix we went looking for a stud dog for Bramble and found a very well respected lady who had bred, shown and worked Flat coats for many years and had a wonderful liver dog that had been very successful in the show ring, field trials and gundog work we liked him and she thought Bramble (and Willow also) were lovely examples of the breed so we went ahead with the match. Much to our disappointment the mating was not successful and although we tried again the next time Bramble came in season we still had no success, we came to the conclusion that we were getting the timing wrong. Racing up and down the length of the country was very wearing for both us and her, so we decided to see if we could find our own dog (any excuse for another Flatty)! I was pretty determined and with a few phone calls to various breeders we were lucky to find another successful breeder that had a lovely liver pup just arrived from Ireland and the very handsome Murdoch came along.

Some time later Willow produced her first litter followed closely by Bramble a few months afterwards and the rest is kind of history!

We have learned lots of things as we have gone along and each litter has added to our experience and also to the puppy pack information that we pass on to our puppies families. We try to get to know our prospective families, asking for vet references and much more information so that we make sure that they are aware of the needs of a flatcoat before we consider letting one of our puppies go to them, we will gently refuse a family if we feel that a flatcoat is not right for them. We're always sad to see our little charges go but lots of people stay in touch and many I am happy to say are now friends. Getting photos and updates is fantastic and you will see lots photos of puppies/dogs on the gallery sent to us by proud families, staying in touch with them all makes it so much easier to let them go, as does the fact that the families who take our puppies are such great people!

We have added girls and boys to the mix as we have gone along, with an eye to quality, good temperament and diversity in our flatties. We like to keep our own girls and bring in out cross boys to shake up the genes and are very lucky to own some handsome boys and very beautiful girls as a result.

Our former puppies going on to be shown with some success, some qualifying for crufts and going down to compete, which is great. Other puppies, now grown are working well, either in field trials or on shoots, many are booked for the whole season I may add and that is very gratifying, one who was picking up for a real VIP in 2017. We have several that are registered PAT/Therapet/Dementia dogs, some doing agility and fly ball and many who have done extremely well with their obedience training gaining silvers and gold's in the Kennel Club Good Citizen courses and also lots who are just very happy family pets.

Along the way we have had some criticism from certain quarters for not showing or shooting, apparently that makes us less worthy to breed Flatcoats. My response to that is to say, come and meet us, come and see how happy our dogs are, talk to people who have met us and have our puppies and decide for yourself. We spoke to our Dog Warden in 2017 and decided to put 'our money where our mouth is' and applied for our council licence which means we are inspected yearly and have to meet fairly rigorous standards. 

We only breed from our best boys and girls who have been chosen carefully, we do all the health tests required and our dogs are healthy, happy, fulfilled flatties. We send away flatty puppies that are confident, physically and mentally sound and support our extended flatty families as little or as much as each of them need. We are very careful when we vet people. We hold our families hands through the whole process of buying a puppy and beyond. We will always take back a dog if things go wrong for a family and we offer advice and support for the life of your flatty.

We never ever imagined that we would be lucky enough to own so many wonderful flat coated retrievers, it's hard work but you get out of them what you put in and they are worth every second of our time.