The "Burg-Sayn-Story"

To live with Great Danes, one has to be a little bit crazy, as our friends usually say. Because you have to adjust not only the complete day but also vacation and leisure planning to the partner dog when living together with a Great Dane. It’s completely different than living with a small breed. You finally cannot take a Great Dane with you as simply as a dachshund and friends often aren't able to be "babysitter” of a Great Dane. My husband who was dachshund owner for a couple of years also had to make this experience.

As a child I loved my grandparents’ terriers, and my first dog was a Dalmatian. I already always had dreamt of Great Danes, and I bought the first one when having plenty of place and time: The black female “Allegra vom Deutschen Eck”.

With Allegra I went to the first shows, where I met other "Great Dane-Fans", under this Linda and Dick v. d. Vijver.

With them we have a quite special friendship. Meanwhile we have one "room of our own" at v.d. Vijvers house since we spend a weekend with our dogs in Oegstgeest (The Neherlands) nearly every month. From Linda I got my first Great Dane male, the harflequin “Patchwork v.’t Buitengebeuren”., and two years later the beautiful female “Utopia v.'t Buitengebeuren”.

Utopia, called "Topsi", should be the mother of the first Great Danes “von der Burg Sayn".
Father of the pups was Rakker van de Pelterdog.

Topsi gave birth to six lovely Babies which found a new home in Holland and Germany, Denmark and England.
Four of this "glorious six" got older than ten years.
The most successful daughter of Topsi was "Alana von der Burg Sayn". She lived with Dick and Linda and got the Netherlands and International champion title. Alana got two lovely litters.

At the separation from my husband I had to let back my dogs with him. I had to live without Great Danes for a long time.

Unfortunately, with this also the “von der Burg Sayn” kennel stopped breeding.

After a break of four years I got a Great Dane again. Tima was a blue harlequin bitch and therefore we were not allowed to breed with her.

Since we wanted to revive the “von der Burg Sayn" kennel, the black “Que sera sera v.’t Buitengebeuren”, called “Kaicy” came to us in January 2003.

Tima died of a cardiac defect on May 19th, 2004 and Kaicy got a new partner only two months later: The black male “Striker v.’t Buitengebeuren”

At the moment I live together with the blue Great Dane "Willowrun's Bohemian Rhapsody von der Burg Sayn" and her brother "Willowrun's Jumpin' Jack Flash".

The "Buitengebeuren Story"

A short history of Buitengebeuren Great Danes, written by my beloved friend Linda v.d. Vijver, who died in December 2015.

We really fell in love with the breed long before we started in Danes.

In 1969 we were driving around looking at the countryside, when we saw this blue great dane that stood in front of his house, and looked like a true Apollo, That dane was Ch. Blanka as we later found out, when we were inquiring about a puppy.

It so happened that there was no puppy available at that time, but the kennel owner was expecting a litter later that year. We bought our first dane Blue Boy, we ran in to a bit of trouble with him when we were moving house.

He was supposed to stay on the terrace but somehow he managed to free himself and ran off. We were looking for him when we heard a great noise, it so happened that our poor boy had been hit by a big truck,sadly he died at the scene.

We went straight back to the breeder and bought two danes, two males one was two and a half years old, and a puppy of Ch. Blanka and Alwina. She was a litter sister to our older boy, Apache.

The puppy was called The Old Favorite Castor Who is the foundation of our kennel together with Impton Onieda and Willowrun's Blue von Riverwood. At the time when we bought Impton Onieda nickname "NUCENCE". She was a black. We also bought Perrywinkle of Oakhatch, a Blue bitch out of the Domofendi line. She was the closest we could get to something out of Domofendi because they had stopped breeding.

Well you can guess what happened, two males and two females. Of course we would like to have a litter, and that was the start of our kennel in 1974.

We have bred 62 litters in 3 colours, and a total of 22 Champions to date,and are very proud of what we have achieved especially in the blue colour, when we started this was the most difficult colour to get headtype, bone and substance. We have bred 10 generations, but we are most proud to have won best dog and bitch over all colours in 1986 with CH. Wrangler v't Buitengebeuren and CH. Ufillia v't Buitengebeuren.

As I got more and more involved in the breed I wanted to learn more and more about genetics, anatomy and so on,so when I was asked to do my first Open show in judging Great Danes I accepted. This was in 1981, and I have been judging ever since. The first time The Kennel Club allowed me to do tickets was in 1988 and I have seen a lot of the world since then. And have friends in many countries through the love for the Great Danes.