We are a small kennel situated in the beautiful Port Stephens region of NSW Australia. We have four Mastiffs, one rescue American Bulldog and a Rottie we inherited from our daughter who live with us on a few acres of paradise. e came to Mastiffs after owning bullmastiffs for 25 years. After we lost our last old Bullmastiff girl Rosie, we thought of getting another one, however Andrew had always wanted an “Old English Mastiff” as he then knew them, since the family has one when he was a child in England in the 1960s. So, when our old girl Rosie the Bullmastiff left us, we got our first Mastiff, our lovely fawn girl Molly. Andrew had spent nearly 30 years in the RAAF at that stage, and had also always dreamed of one day breeding dogs. So, when he retired from the permanent Air Force and transferred to the Air Force Reserves, working only 3 days per week and finally putting down roots here in Port Stephens we bred Molly and had our first litter in 2011, from which we kept two pups – Penny and Blue.
Penny subsequently had two litters of her own, and by this stage, we realised that, whilst we were producing really nice pet Mastiffs, we really weren’t producing the quality of dog that we really aimed for. Andrew felt that was because, even though we had used quality, Best in Show winning males to sire our litters, we were inadvertently doing a ‘loose line breeding’ to some of the more mediocre dogs that existed on both sides of the puppies pedigrees. To this end, we decided that, if we really wanted to continue breeding and do it “properly” we would need to get a better quality of bitch and then mate her to some top quality males from overseas.
So, in 2016, we were fortunate enough to obtain our lovely girl Ruby (now CH Grandcoeur Showgirl) from Ian and Liane Le Nepveu of Grandcoeur Mastiffs in Victoria. Ruby is predominantly from the lovely Hunzeal breeding of Amasha Caffyn, and was a significant improvement in type and “quality” from our previous Mastiffs.
Ruby was subsequently mated to some high quality males, and given us some very nice pups, and her beautiful daughter Daisy has also produced some lovely pups to go forward with. Whilst we feel that, even though we’ve been breeding these guys for 13 years now, we are still very much learners, we believe that the future is looking rosy as we can see “the plan coming together”.
The Plan
Our aim at Cadfell is to breed sound, healthy, typical Mastiffs with good temperaments that are well suited to becoming loved family members. To that end, will only breed from dogs that we consider to be well bred, healthy, sound animals that have had hip and elbow scored as a minimum. All our dogs are happy, well adjusted and live with us in a family environment. They are regularly walked around the neighbourhood and love to meet all the neighbours and their dogs, and we often get some interesting looks and comments whilst walking four or even more Mastiffs on the lead 🙂
Our vision of the Mastiff is a large, powerful, active, fit and agile dog that can run, play and live an enjoyable life. To us, the ideal size for a Mastiff male is around 32 inches in height and 110 kg in weight. He should be an imposing animal, very muscular and powerful…not as tall as a Great Dane, but much more strongly built. He should have a large, square head without too much wrinkle and have powerful hindquarters to provide great drive to his movement, He should appear to move effortlessly and easily despite his great size. I envision the ideal bitch being a bit smaller than the males, ideally around the 30 inch height and 85 kilo weight, but equally strong in build to her male counterpart, with a strong, but feminine head. We are still working on it!!!
