Us - Far Horizons Farm

Cavalier King Charles Spaniels

"The mind of a big dog in the body of a small dog"

Far Horizons Farm is a dedicated, in-home breeder of AKC/CKCSC registered Cavalier King Charles Spaniels from Great Britain Champion bloodlines. Our interest in this breed was kindled during the Reagan presidency when Nancy Reagan had a Cavalier at the White House, a Blenheim named Rex. All our Cavaliers live in our home with us. We are both retired from the corporate world and seldom are our Cavaliers left at home alone. Our first three Cavaliers (Sofie, Sonya, and Lancer) are shown here as puppies.

In an effort to find quality Cavaliers with long-lived bloodlines, we contacted and subsequently visited the homes of many of the top Cavalier breeders in Great Britain including the Top Breeder for 2006 and the Top Breeder for 2007. We personally selected and brought home many of our Cavaliers from the breeders we visited in Great Britain.

All our Cavaliers receive excellent veterinary care. We maintain OFA (http://www.offa.org/) health certification for all our Cavaliers. We attend heart and eye clinics with our Cavaliers to have their hearts checked by a cardiologist and their eyes checked by an ophthamologist. We maintain our own records from these exams and register the results with OFA and CERF. Health certificates can be viewed on-line for our boys: Dreamy, Theo, Magic, Damon, Mic, Desi, and for our girls: Romie, Emma, Brooke, Brandi, DeDe, Devon, Frannie, Ariel, Patsy, and Ellie.

All our Cavaliers are registered with the CKCSC-USA and our puppies are placed with CKCSC-USA papers. Our Cavaliers are also AKC registered, and the puppies are delivered with AKC registration applications. Our imported Cavaliers are also KC (Kennel Club) registered in the UK. Most of our puppies are placed as companions with AKC limited registration.

Whelping and raising young puppies is done in our bedrooms -- no kennel life for these pampered pets. Our puppies begin life in a whelping box in a climate-controlled bedroom with the temperature maintained about 82 degrees and the humidity maintained about 50%. Each puppy is weighed every day for the first thirty days to assure healthy growth. For the times we are not in the bedroom with the litter, every TV in the house receives a wireless video feed from our camcorder in the puppy room. Our large screen TV in the living room uses Picture-In-Picture to monitor the activity in the puppy area (perhaps a good application for a web cam!). At about 4 weeks their area expands from a whelping box to an exercise pen. They are introduced to solid food (a slurry). At about 6 weeks of age the puppies start to socialize with our other Cavaliers. They are weaned at six weeks and gradually switch from their slurry to their dry puppy food.

We were extremely fortunate to conduct our dog food research prior to the pet food recall disaster. We carefully studied every ingredient used in dog foods today to determine what we believe to be the good vs. the bad ingredients. We then tried several dry dog foods where we liked the ingredients. However, many of these holistic dog foods did not pass the taste test for our Cavaliers, while others did not pass the healthy looking/smelling poop test. We eventually discovered some suitable dry dog food, but at least we were trying the safe foods before we ever heard about the unsafe foods. Our dry foods have never been listed in the pet food recall. Our puppies start on solid food with a slurry made from their dry puppy food.

We are located on 24 beautiful acres in the Austin Texas area, where we received an AKC Certificate of Inspection in January 2011. We never ship Cavaliers but we do provide personal delivery within the lower 48.

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Dreamy and Brandi are shown below in our ad, on p19, of the Royal Spaniels magazine, Spring 2009 edition.