I am Isabel Lundstedt and I live in south of Sweden in a town called Malmö with my family who besides me is made up of my husband Niclas, our four vallhunds Gizzmo, Bessa, Birka and Alice and Smulis the cat, my son Adam and his girlfriend Therese and their two cats Tindra and Joda, our daughter Manuella and her husband Markus, their daughter and my beautiful grandchild Vilja and their vallhund Ozzie and two cats Smulan and Molle. We also have Mimmi the parrot in our family.

My “doglife” started at the age of 19. I like many others nagged my parents about a dog – which I never got. So when I moved out of home I got my first adult German shepherd, called Gevín, together with my then boyfriend now husband. Beginners as we were we made all the possible mistakes. Gevín seemed to be very nice when we went to look at him and we asked if he had been character tested -Sure, was the answer we got. We were satisfied with this and didn’t have any idea to ask about the outcome of the test instead we paid, took our dog and went home happy as a fiddler. Rather soon we noticed Gevín wasn’t at all the same way as he had presented in his own backyard. He showed fear for everything and everyone, a few times he made attacks towards people visiting us. After another character test which he totally dumped and some pressure from the dog training club the previous owner agreed to take Gevín back and refund our money.

Next dog was a German shepherd pup called Kazán. Kazán was equipped with the most wonderful temperament you could wish for but also hip displasia – we had to take him away when his hips could no longer support him – at only 16 months of age. Amongst other things Kazán taught our little daughter to walk and he was her constant companion. It took me over a year before I could start thinking about dogs again.

You would think we were deterred from everything about German shepherds at this stage but we were totally smitten after a visit to Brantastigs Kennel. This visit ended with another dog pup called Peps. Peps was my soul mate, we totally adored each other. We trained obedience and rescue. When Peps was 7 years old we were asked if we could consider letting him do stud work, after having checked out the bitch in question carefully we said yes and got a dog pup called Sting from the litter. We had to take away Peps at the age of 10, due to an intestinal illness, the grief was gigantic, luckily we still had Pep's wonderful son Sting continuing to give us lots of joy, easing our grief.

One day whilst exercising Sting we met a lady with a dog, size smaller. The dog looked like a mini German shepherd, I had met my first Swedish Vallhund and I was smitten. My curiosity was aroused and my search for information about the breed started. Since the Vallhund isn’t particularly common, there isn’t much literature about it but at last I found the specialty club's Web page and I read it until I knew it by heart. On the Web page there is a list of breeders and their Web pages – so I spent many hours in front of the computer. One thing I soon noticed was that the majority of Vallhunds are grey not red like the one I had met.

Time passed and it was several months before I met the lady with the Vallhund. I took the opportunity to ask what Kennel her dog was from as he was so red and beautiful. As soon as I got in the door at home I threw myself over the computer to check out Kennel Rätt&Slätts webpage and immediately found the red bitch Ada who is the dame to the lady’s dog. Straight away I sent a mail to Gunnel and Jörgen, who owns the kennel, with an inquiry about possible future puppies from Ada. I also mentioned that for the time being we had no interest in getting a puppy, we just wanted to know for the future. After a while I had forgotten all about the mail.

About a week later the phone rang – it was Gunnel. She told me she actually had a litter from Ada right then and the pups were 4 weeks old, if we wanted there was a red dog pup with stubb for us. We had no plans on getting a pup until Sting was a bit older but no harm in looking. After some convincing of the husband we got into the car and drove to Jonstorp. On arrival we were greeted by Gunnel and her husband Jörgen then showed to the whelping box, the rest you can figure out for yourself.........I lost my heart. I was on the floor amongst the puppies talking baby language and acting like a fool. As you probably can guess the little charmer who got the name Gizzmo moved in with us in Malmö eventually. Today he is a handsome Vallhund and I am not regretting for one second that we took him, I say “Lundstedt was written all over him”, to me he is a once in a lifetime dog. Since that day a further 5 vallhunds have moved in with the Lundstedt family, the dog Alfons (2001-2008), the bitches Bessa, Birka and Alice and Gizzmo's and Bessa's son Ozzie.