Melanie Curtis & Mitchell Warby

​Tundrai is currently home to seven gorgeous lappies - Demo, Raizu, Kiita, Arctos, Ghost, Katara and Calcifer, with several more abroad and others in partnership.
 

We breed sparingly (currently an average of less than one litter a year), carefully and aim to produce healthy, sound puppies with good temperaments and sound structure, and aim to better the breed and our own breeding program.

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We consider ourselves preservation breeders with a vast interest in health and diversity. Our dogs' health is of utmost import to us. We want to do our best to ensure our lines are long-lived, that they will live rich full lives and be healthy and pain-free. Because of this we only select breeding stock that we deem to be healthy and breed with the utmost care, with thousands of hours spent pouring over pedigrees and potential combinations, and obtaining health information about lines across the world, and much of our personal career income utilised in importing dogs and semen to help expand the genetics in Australia. .

 

We have been involved in the dog show world for many years, helping handle dogs and raise over fifteen litters for other breeders over time. Although we are not very competitive, we also dabble in a vast array of sports in order to keep our dogs at home enriched and are continuously introducing them to new activities.

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We are split between two states; Queensland and NSW, with Melanie Curtis and her husband Nate living in Sydney, and Mitchell Warby with his family in Brisbane.

 

Demo, Raizu, Kiita and Arctos are our 'joint children' and we all have the privilege to live with them, as we swap them around every couple of months so that both parties get time with them, meaning we have time to dedicate to each individual and each party keeping around 1-5 dogs at a time. 

 

We also have several dogs we have bred that live with others in partnership agreements; to expand our gene pool and be available for the future generations of Tundrai.

Our set-up means that we can dedicate to each of our dogs, keep smaller numbers while still positively affecting the gene pool, and that all dogs owned or bred by us are treated like family. We never want one of our dogs we own or have bred to be involved in commercial breeding, or to just be a 'statue' in a backyard. None of our dogs are kenneled; they sleep on our beds and live in our bustling houses. They are family members and are treated as such.

 

If you are looking for a garden ornament, please search elsewhere!

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The name Tundrai arises from Sami 'tūnntre', or in English 'tundra' (where these beautiful dogs work!) and our foundation girl, 'Raizu'.

By chance, when on an afternoon walk one day in 2009, we crossed paths with a beautiful Keeshond. Unable to remember the name of the breed when we searched for it, we ended up going in alphabetical order online through the breeds to find it once again, and with F just before K, we couldn't help but fall in love with the gorgeous Finnish Lapphund as we laid our eyes on Armahani's gorgeous boy, Louis, who was the cover model in that instant for the breed on Dogzonline.

This spiralled the beginning of the quest to have a lappie join us, and after much research, Demo joined us 11 months later. Although we had both had dogs growing up, this was the first dog that we would know a true bond with. Demo's breeder, Cassie, encouraged us to show Demo and thus our introduction to the dog world had begun. Along came Raizu in 2015, then Kiita in 2016,  and the rest is history.

Our dogs mean everything to us.