kayleigh (uk)

It must have been late in the spring of 1992 that we were on holiday in Oost Groningen where we met an old college friend of my husband’s. He and his wife had a small black and tan dog, a nice little thing, they said it was an Australian Terrier. At that time we knew very little about dogs but we did have an old Labrador cross, the last of a pair we had taken in from the dogs home.

Once back home we browsed through some dog books from the library because we suspected that Australian Terrier was just a fancy name for a cross breed.

Surprise! Surprise! It was a real pure bred dog and there were lots of other nice little terriers too.

We thought that one of these could be just the thing for us and, following the advice in the books, we got in touch with a breed club.

After lots of ‘phone calls and a visit to a breeder just to see one in real life we got the chance of buying a Norwich Terrier puppy.

So by the end of August 1992 we were on our way home with a very small Norwich bitch with a very long name, Lady Ykenburg from Fra-Joo’s Home.

We had also heard that on 27th September 1992 the very first Norwich Championship Show in Holland was to be held. Naturally our puppy was too young to participate but we went anyway as we were already very interested in anything to do with Norwich Terriers. We saw people, benches, trimming tables and lots of super Norwiches. Perhaps it was then that the idea started to germinate that maybe one day our Kayleigh would go to a show, just a small open show to see how it was…………………………..

In 1992 I never imagined that I would show Kayleigh at international shows, or that she would become a Netherlands champion, let alone that 4 of her children would not only gain the same title but others too and that her son would strut his stuff at Crufts!

So now we have a “Kennel” and 4 Norwiches around the house at the moment, but there are more due any day now…………….. Kayleigh’s grand- and great- grand children are following in her footsteps and doing the Wybar kennel proud at national and international shows.

Dear Kayleigh left us on 13th January 2006. She will never be forgotten and lives on in her descendants.