At Kamia Kennels Preservation breeding of Norwegian Elkhounds focuses on maintaining the breed’s ancient, functional, and instinctive traits, particularly by utilizing diverse, historic bloodlines and minimizing inbreeding altogether, in direct response to declining Norwegian Elkhound breed numbers.

Key efforts by Kamia Kennels is to prioritize tracking lineages back multiple generations to ensure health and to preserve the “old-world” characteristics. The current litter of Vaeda is able to showcase multiple generations of working Elkhounds on both sides.

We have multiple lineages that we can track back many, many generations so we can see the behavior, traits, instinctive skills, prior ability to focus on the handler, traits that need to be witnessed in many generations. This is a key aspect for foundation lineage Elkhounds that are going to be working in preservation and restoration, but is also valuable for those wanting a truly gifted working and companion Elkhound that is above all the healthiest.

Goals: The aim is to prevent the breed from becoming a “diminished version of itself” and ensuring it keeps its original hunting instincts, temperament, and physical health.
Methodology: Preservation breeders like Kamia Kennels focus on genetic diversity, often avoiding inbreeding or strict, arbitrary show standards that do not contribute to long-term health. They use “Genetic Lineages” to maintain consistency in behavior and traits across generations.

Luna was a daughter of Tekla and Revna is a current daughter of Luna. The upcoming litter from Revna will feature more of this “Lineage”. The earlier daughters of Revna are all Full Blood lineage females that can replenish the genetic pool.

Key Focus Areas:
Longevity and Health: Preservation breeding aims to maintain a genetically diverse, long-lasting, and healthy breed. Tekla and Luna are featured below, Revna is a daughter of Luna. You’ll see directly below the Tekla / Luna video, the Full Blood daughter of Revna, her name is Nyra. Check out how similar and precise the traits and behavior follow from Tekla/Luna through Revna to Nyra.

The above is a “Short” you can view the full version here: Tekla and Luna Kamia Kennels Elkhounds

This is Nyra the daughter of Revna, Granddaughter of Luna, can you all see how good and strong these traits are.

Below is Tegan, a great Norwegian Elkhound female that showcases the longevity, the instinctive skills, handler focus and great personality.

Temperament: Ensuring the dogs remain excellent, confident, and reliable family companions.

Traceable History: Utilizing dogs with well-documented, often European or master breeders, incredible working pedigrees.

Karu is the first Norwegian Elkhound of this great bloodline to leave the old country and come to North America. He is a Full Blood contributor, but is instrumental in bringing diverse genetics into our Kamia Kennels program. We currently have many of his daughters working in our preservation program. Revna is about to whelp her second litter, she is a primary contributor to genetic restoration, and a daughter of Karu.

One of the best young Norwegian Elkhound females is the Beautiful Silver Moon. I have a great feature profile of this stunning beauty from this recent video.

The mother of Silver Moon is Silver Nessa. An incredible daughter of another import outcross the Beautiful Silver Nova.

There are few if any females as good as those out of Silver Nessa and Silver Nova. We have incredible results with that lineage preserving our ancient male Norwegian Elkhounds.

The famous Pretty Boy Leif was also imported to bring a unique and powerful outcross genetic into the Kamia Kennels preservation program and he has sired many of our existing preservation Norwegian Elkhounds. His influence goes further as Vaeda, his daughter has produced numerous Full Blood restoration Elkhounds and his other daughters are soon to be increasing that as well. His son Odin recently sired the Varja litter that was just placed in Montana and the pups are home now.

Two of the “Incredible Odin and Varja Males” now in Upstate New Year, they will be held intact for further Norwegian Elkhound expansion and preservation. Utilizing the combined efforts of our clients to further the goal of preservation.

Importance: Such initiatives are critical because many unique bloodlines are threatened, and without these efforts, the original, robust Elkhound may disappear.
Preservation Breeders: Kamia Kennels is highlighted as a primary breeder focusing on this approach in North America.
These breeders often work with “prolific” lines, aiming to keep the same genetic lines for as long as possible.

Record Norwegian Elkhound Litter from Rita are 5th Generation at Kamia Kennels. Rita is a daughter of Karu and Kai, two of the most prolific lineages in Norwegian Elkhound history.

Kai was the incredible mother of Rita, she had 34 outstanding preservation Norwegian Elkhound pups.

The historic backgrounds of the Kamia Kennels preservation bloodlines doesn’t end there, may I get a chance in the near future to expand on this list so the full preservation work can be outlined.

I appreciate your time and feedback, reach me at merv@kamiakennels.ca anytime.