Our Story
Having grown up surrounded by dogs, it was always our wish to have our own. After living for decades in cities around the world, we finally made the move to the countryside, first to the Waikato and then Canterbury, so that we could fulfill our dream of having our own breeding kennel.
Our love-affair with leonbergers began in 2013 after years of discussions about what breed of dog would suit us and our lifestyle. At the time, Lyn from Derbyshire Kennels had a litter due and on meeting Lyn and her dogs, we instantly knew that leonbergers were for us! We were lucky that Lyn decided to trust us with a puppy and Zeus joined us as our first leonberger. A couple of weeks later, a puppy was returned to Lyn and we decided to take on this second puppy, and so the fun began with Ivo joining us at home! Since then we have been members of the New Zealand Leonberger Club
After hundreds of hours of discussions we decided to set up our own breeding kennel and set ourselves the goal of buying a property where we could do this and in the middle of 2019 we purchased a 5 acre lifestyle block. We searched for genetics across the world and followed the progress of litters and kennels with our vision of importing genetics which would help strengthen the genetic pool in New Zealand and worldwide. (because of this we don’t do repeat litters.) After years of planning and developing relationships with breeders overseas we took the plunge and were fortunate that Andrea at Vanitza Kennels shared our vision which led to us importing Keeta as our foundation bitch and Leonrua was born!
Ronan & Jake
Leonrua Name
The name “Leonrua” is a combination of Irish and Māori which signifies the cultural heritage of the owners of Leonrua Leonbergers. As our kennel started with two leonbergers, it was only right to have a name which signified this. “Leon” is the Irish for lion while “rua” is Māori for two. So the kennel name literally means two lions! “Rua” is also the Irish for red, so Leonrua also means red lion. This is also significant due to the red tinge of the coats of our first two leonbergers. The drawing of the leonberger in our logo is the silhouette of Zeus (Derbyshire Always-Arana), our first leonberger.