- Lisbigney, Abbeyleix, Co. Laois, Ireland
- Give Us a Call +353 87 6889 142
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The word Cliáthan is the Irish or the Gaelic for Hill side and as we live on the side of a hill and being Irish this is why we chose Cliáthan It is pronounced Cle-Hawn.
With a lifelong passion for hunting game I have been doing so since I was old enough to hold a shotgun, I started with a single barrel Stevens shotgun and a Springer Spaniel and he was good as any Springer was, but birds started to get scarce and I needed a dog that could hunt and cover more ground, and one day I was talking to a friend and he told me about this lady that lived in Wexford that breeds Brittany Spaniels and that was when we fell in love with the Brittany Spaniel,
We bought our first Brittany there and the following year we imported a bitch from England and bred our first litter in early 1992 and have been breeding and working with Brittany Spaniels ever since. In recent years we have imported dogs from the top field trial kennels in France to improve our gene pool.
We are proud to be able to say that many of our dogs have been exported to many different owners worldwide, even as far away as Florida in the USA . Our first export went to South Dakota which is known as the pheasant capital of the world it is said that there are more pheasants than people there!
Our Kennels are famous for producing dogs of high natural ability, ideal for the foot hunter.
We breed our dogs to the F.C.I standard, which is the French standard where the breed originated from.
Our breeding stock are all BVA Hip scored, and we only breed from dogs with a hip score of less than 18 or graded A or B
Our brood bitches are selected for their natural working ability. We shoot over, and field trial our males.
In Ireland we hunt on foot with our dogs on pheasant, snip, and woodcock to great effect, but they are equally at home in the Show ring. We are life members of the Irish Kennel Club and all our dogs are registered with the IKC and all are microchipped.
If you would like to learn more about the Brittany spaniel (Epagneaul Breton) just click on the link.
David has been hunting with Brittany Spaniels since he was a child. He fell in love with dogs very quickly, and started building his pack at the age of 20. He has reared over 60 pups and kept a lot of them to work and hunt for his own personal enjoyment. David is married to Sophie, and they have two children and six grandchildren!
Sophie is the Operations Manager at the kennels. She has a number of kennels and takes daily care of the dogs, bitches and pups. When she isn’t climbing a mountain, she also loves all kinds of animals, having had ponies when her kids were small, and still has chickens roaming free, providing them with fresh eggs every day.