Nederlandse Kooikerhondje Club of Southern California
THE BARONESSE
Baronesse van Hardenbroek van Ammerstol played a most crucial role in the shaping of our kooikerhondje. She was a patriotic dog breeder involved in all Dutch dog breeds from an early age. But she is perhaps best known for her work with the Kooikerhondje which she appears to have resurrected from an almost extinct state.
Though a member of the Dutch nobility and able to point at a long family tree starting in the early 13 hundreds, the baroness was not at all snobbish but rather straightforward, hands on, and down to earth. She had been involved in the Dutch Stabij (Stabyhoun) a hunting dog but became aware of the quickly vanishing Kooikerhondje during the late 1930. She asked a traveling salesman to help her find suitable examples of this dog by giving him a description and a bit of hair. At some point during the Second World War the salesman found a year and a half old bitch in the north of the Netherlands (Friesland). But the farmer who had the dog would not sell it to her, as it was his daughter's dog. It was war and people in the north were poor. A promise by the Baronesse to send treats for her daughter swung the farmer to let her borrow the dog “Tommie” for a while.
Tommie gave her four beautiful bitches, three of which she named after the princesses who were in exile in Canada. She toyed with the idea to call the breed “Prince dogs” (which is what they were used to be called) or “Willem the Silent dogs” but thought this might provoke the German occupiers too much and settled on Kooikerhondje, which reflects the work the dog was involved in. Over the next decades she toiled to bring back this most lovely breed. Her ideal and example were the dogs seen so often on the old Dutch masters.
In 1966 the Kooikerhondje was officially recognized by the Dutch canine society. The work towards breed recognition had started in 1958, whereby some 75 dogs were shown for the committee. Were it not for the Baronesse, her hard work, devotion, and knowledge, we would not have this lovely breed to enjoy.
