Kim Haddon – All Breeds Judge

– David Margan

For Kim Haddon, 2023 will be a very special year as she will celebrate 50 years of continuous membership of Dogs Queensland.

And it all started with horses.

“Well, my early life was spent around Arab horses that my Mother, Jill Flack, bred, but ever since I was very young, my big love was dogs. They were my best friends, and the lifelong affair began at age four with a Standard Smooth Dachshund.”

That process was accelerated when she had a few serious horse-riding accidents, especially one at age nine that was the decider;

“I was thrown and ended up with a fractured skull and I remember spending a long time lying on the couch with an enormous hematoma on my head having to keep quiet and I lost my confidence riding.”

For the family it all really started with her Mother deciding they needed a guard dog on their new farm in Toowoomba and she researched and bought a German Shepherd bitch, later selecting and mating her to a Champion sire from New Zealand.

“Through her breeding of horses, my Mother taught me the importance of form, function, type, balance, soundness and movement, so we always bought well-bred pure breed dogs.” “They have such a wonderful temperament for a large breed, they are so affectionate and sweet natured and think of their humans as god.”

In 1975, I bred my first purebred litter of German Shepherds under my Mother’s Prefix “Millavale” and from this litter came one of Australia’s Top German Shepherds at the time.

Her Mum clearly knew what she was doing as Kim took that 7-month-old pup from her first litter to the 1975 Royal Ekka Show at age 15, competing against 46 German Shepherds from Interstate and 36 imported German Shepherd dogs from Germany, England and New Zealand and walked away with Best Puppy in Show and she was hooked!

Kim bred and trialled German Shepherds for 15 years and Rottweilers for 11 years.

At age 18 she saw footage of a Bernese Mountain Dog on television and thought it was the most beautiful dog she had ever seen and so a new canine passion was born, she had to have one. To this day her first of the breed, ‘Heidi’ is her favourite;

So deep was her bond with this breed that along with Lyn Brand, they founded the breed in Australia and Kim has bred and showed them for 38 years, importing and exporting to many countries throughout the world.

Kim attended the World’s first Bernese Mountain Dog Health Symposium held in Langenthal, Switzerland in 2000, discussing breeding and health issues affecting the Bernese Mountain Dog Worldwide.

“I pride myself on the strict standards of soundness to which I breed, and I was named as breeding #1 and #2 Top Soundness Producing BMD Sires in Australasia, in a book written by English Author and statistician, Malcolm Willis (UK).”

As a breed the Bernese Mountain dog is not a common breed at all, so it surprised Kim when daughter Katrin announced she wanted a breed of her own because the Bernese “were so common”;

“That’s all Katrin had grown up with and so all she knew. She then went to the other extreme and wanted a Pomeranian. I couldn’t find one suitable locally, so we ended up importing one from Sweden but then … Katrins passion followed her grandmother into horses and she went overseas and did dressage events in Germany, … so there I was with an Imported Pom, fell in love with him and the rest is history.”

To improve the breed here in Australia Kim has imported Pomeranians from eight different countries for her breeding program. She was obviously very good at it, as she bred the Aust Supreme Ch /Am Gr Ch Zeigen Aurora Australis, who quickly became #4 Pomeranian in America in 2014 and subsequently was invited to compete at Westminster in 2015.

To improve the breed here in Australia Kim has imported Pomeranians from eight different countries for her breeding program. She was obviously very good at it, as she bred the Aust Supreme Ch /Am Gr Zeigen Aurora Australis, who quickly became #4 Pomeranian in America in 2014 and subsequently was invited to compete at Westminster in 2015.

And if that wasn’t enough, Kim has also owned, bred and shown Jack Russell Terriers, thanks to her son Scott’s interest in the breed. All up, to this point in her career, Kim and her Zeigen Kennels, have bred well over 100 Champions in her chosen breeds.

But wait there’s more!

At 20, Kim decided to again follow in her Mum’s She sought advice from an old Darling Downs legend, Charlie Head, pausing he looked at her and intoned in a voice weathered by age and its values; “Go away and come back in another two years!”

“It was a time when young women weren’t encouraged in this field, and it did put me off somewhat.” said Kim

Over a decade, in fact, before Kim would try again and it took 17 years of hard slog and the interruptions of helping her two children through high school. In 2016, she finally became an AllBreeds Judge;

“It was always my ambition and when it happened it was like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders and I was absolutely exhilarated.”

The judging has taken her all over the world from Finland to China and she has only just returned

from Canada where she judged two major events, the Canadian Pomeranian National Specialty and the four-day Alberta Summer Classic.

“Canadians are very much like us, they’re very friendly, relaxed, love a laugh but I think they have a greater respect for sportsmanship in their canine world than we currently do.”

Its’ probably Kim’s greatest observation about our present;

“I do miss the old days, the respect that was shown to our judges, our President, executives and our fellow competitors. Our world is no longer a welcoming and helpful environment as it was. Once you could freely discuss each other’s dogs, good and bad traits with fellow breeders and it was a process of sharing and a learning tool but now people take it all so personally and seem to resent anything that may be seen as critical. I do miss the respectful honesty of the past.”

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