I had a great conversation with Johan Weckhuyzen. Johan is the breeder of van de Duvetorre Malinois kennels in Belgium. He is also the president of FMBB. I've known Johan for a very long time and finally was able to catch him to come to the podcast. We talk about Malinois, the legends in the breed, selection l, genetics, and training, Ring sport, IGP, detection and much more. We did not have time to go over the future goals of FMBB , this will part two. Enjoy and don’t forget to comment!
Chapter 1: Who is Johan Weckhuyzen?
I'm super, super excited to have as my guest, Johan Beckhuizen from Belgium. And the introduction can take a very long time. First thing, for anybody that don't know the name or the name sounds familiar, the very well-known belgian malinois kennel van de duvetore he's the owner of the kennel he is also the president and one of the founding members of the fmbb the
Belgian Shepherd World Organization. Of course, he has quite a few other very interesting things that he does in his life that I cannot wait to hear about. But, Johan, I don't know, I'm shaking. It's been for so long that we haven't had a chance to actually talk like this way.
and we know each other just as we were talking earlier, like I don't think we even should say how long because we're gonna be looking so old. But thank you for coming. I know you have insanely busy schedule always and I cannot wait to hear about everything. But where do we start? Because again, so many interesting things we have, I wouldn't even know how we met.
It was probably 88 or nine or somewhere way back. I think it was right around the time when uh luke vansterbrush was going out of the dogs and he was splitting between bertrand and and and you and a few other people and i think somewhere around that time it's long long time ago exactly i i i think we met the first time in the world championship in finland
when you competed with Nikita. Uh-huh.
Oh, yeah. Oh, gosh, yeah. That was a long time.
Yes, and I was there with my good friend, Jos. Jos. Who competed with his rock and roll, Kishot.
Kishot, perfect name.
And I think that was the first time that we met.
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Chapter 2: What is the history of the Belgian Malinois?
Chapter 3: How did Johan get into dog breeding?
And at the same time, Luke came there with the breeding program. I started to know. So I bought my first Malinois, I think in 1990. And so, okay, then it goes quickly because you go and you go, you do one step further and two steps further. And in very short time, I had 10, 15 dogs at home. So in 95, I started then professionally as a boarding kennel.
And the boarding kennel, okay, was interesting to do with my wife. But that's not really my thing. I went really in the dogs, in the sport. And with Luke, I met André Varlet, who is still my vice president, who is now recovering from a very bad accident he had in August last year. But I can say he's doing well now. So that's good. And from one came another.
And so I came completely involved in the docs. Professionally, it brought me. with the boarding kennel, I came into the position that people start to ask me, hey, Johan, can you find us a dog? We need dogs for the army. We need dogs for this. We need dogs for that. So I came in this world from buying and selling dogs, adult dogs, trained dogs.
We had to prepare those dogs for the clients, like all those things. So that went on till, I think, about 10 years ago. It was interesting to know that my first client was Joseph Russella in 1992. I still remember very well. And Joseph Russella, he was buying dogs for French Army, for Air Force. And he was at that time already full-time busy with explosive detection dogs in the Army.
And he did a lot of things. He was responsible when he met me for buying the dogs, training the dogs, and training the teams. And that became a very, very intense relationship. And besides the sport, of course. And with Joseph, he changed from army to private companies in the year 2000, where he became responsible for the airport in Paris for all the detection dogs, for explosive detection dogs.
And he had 60 teams under him. After six years, he said, hey, Johan, six or eight years, he said, Johan, uh i start to get bored because i'm not working for myself and i want to start up a company and so i joined him in the company in france and we formed the company named k9 detection uh and and uh
that was very very very intense let's say like that so i decided that brought good money i must say like this yeah yeah and so at that time i decided to go to start this same project in belgium but in belgium there was nothing yet there was no explosive dogs privately but with the law the european law that was there the possibility was present.
So in 2011, I started with my new company in detection dogs, Canine Detection Belgium. And what I'm still doing now, about... Six years ago, I made up a new training center, canine detection training, because we need it for all the dogs that we train, that we use on the airport in Brussels and the airport in Ostende. And this is a bit the professional way how my career went.
In 92, also the same year with Andre Varley, Andre, he started by organizing the first competition. for Belgium Shepherds, like a European championship in Germany. And there, it was at that time, Volker Riedel, who was organizing together with Peter Engel from DMC. And so André asked me, hey, Johan, can you check up if you can have an IGP contract? team to compete. I said, oh, IGP?
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Chapter 4: What are the differences between Malinois and Lacanois?
So what happened after the hunt? Where did it go?
After the hunt, I know we went to Slovenia. And I remember very well, like in Slovenia, we also did the Monduring. Then I started from home with my van and my trailer behind with everything for the Monduring. Because in Slovenia, they had no Monduring. And I can say I did that for several years. On every competition I came, I put up the fields with some of my friends, of course.
I cannot do it alone. But like that, we could introduce the sport and... When we see that the last championship before we had Corona, it was in Czechia. There we had 850 dogs competing in all the different disciplines that we had because we started with five, but now we are on 10 already, 10 different competitions.
And already for this year, I can say for the first time, we split up the world championships. Because we have already a first world championship in Belgium in end of April for the search and rescue dogs.
Okay.
Because Greece already told us because, okay, maybe you know, normally it should be in Portugal this year.
Yes.
Wow.
Then we were blocked. Okay. And we could find Greece that organized two years ago or three years ago, three years ago.
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Chapter 5: What is the significance of the FMBB?
My question, because again, you have the training experience and you've worked with both Malice and Lacanois. What would you say the interesting differences and commonalities between the two if you compare? What did you like, like you personally?
Well, how I started with Lacroix is because in my club in Leke, I had a good friend, Johan, also Johan, and he was competing in obedience with a Lacroix female. And in the club, he was also in the club in Leke. In the club, he was also training some bike work because he wanted to do the CQN.
CQN is like a little Belgian ring program, but for dogs that are doing shows and that want to have a Belgian championship title. That's like a test they have to do. So I said at that time, oh, Everybody has like a Malinois. And I saw this with the curly hair. And in that time, I also had a little bit curly hair. But that's one time ago.
And now we wear glasses.
Yes. And no, but I like the dog a lot. And he was working very well. And so I said, hey, Johan. I had my old English sheepdog and at that moment my girlfriend, before I was at that moment, she said, no, no second dog and this and that. And so one day she decided to split up and leave. So the next day I was calling for a dog. And I say, hey, if she come back, it's too late. Then I have my dog.
But OK, she didn't come back. OK, but that's history. But Johan said, hey, but the breed where I bought before I work together, they have a little right now and we can go. And at that time, I didn't know anything about the shepherds because that would be the first one that I buy. And but. I'm somebody, I'm always trying to be informed before I do something.
And so I checked a bit on the lake and this and pedigrees, and I needed to understand a little bit. And when we went there, the lady, Evelyn, it was the kennel van Krikkebosch, with Evelyn, who was the breeder. And so Evelyn, she explained me everything. And she showed me the pedigrees. And in Belgium, you know, we have the white pedigrees and we have the rose pedigrees. Yeah.
And the rose pedigrees... You can explain a little bit, yeah, for everybody.
And the white pedigrees, there's a full pedigree, a full generation of... Yes. And in Belgium, you can... If your dog has no pedigree, you can, by show... get a rose pedigree, but then only the name of the dog that did the show is mentioned. And that's an annex in the stud book. And so when I checked, the puppies, they would have a rose pedigree.
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Chapter 6: What challenges has Johan faced in dog training?
And I can recognize quite fast the dogs out of this origin and Quichotte was used quite a lot. And we see people that use him on beauty lines and start to, because most of the Laconois, I say beauty lines, When I started with Max, there was not so much working with Delacroix. It was because he was very rare.
And also one of the nice things I had, one day we competed in the Holland Championship of the club. And all the big Malinois handlers from that time, they were participating, right? Like Techlar, like Van Rossum, Knopp, all the big ones that came to the World Championships. And they didn't know so well Joss, and they didn't know so well Quichotte.
And Quichotte, he was lucky to do the last dog bite work.
so everybody was standing there because bite work you know how it is when dogs biting in IGP everybody is watching dogs do the obedience but okay you see a little bit public because then it's the time to go and drink something but everybody was there standing and I remember still because now still my head on my arms is starting to raise the judge he started his command when he finished the thing
Well, he said, when I look now, it's a shame I have to wait to the last dog to see the dog was really biting. So all the other ones were like, oh! And I was like, holy shit, what is this? And also there, he stepped out with 99 points in the bite work. And that's for a Lacanois. So those are really...
extremely nice memories and that is uh so do you do you i don't know when when was possible to collect and and freeze semen but um i don't know when did that started i know um did you miss that opportunity with quichotte or i i must say i already in that time i did some frozen semen and i still have
I still have. I have semen from mucks, my lachenois. I have semen from quichots. And I have semen from one of my famous marinois.
Yeah, I know, Stunt. I'm trying to talk to you here and there. Every once in a while I keep talking about this one. You know what happened? I'll tell you a really kind of unfortunate story with Turquodos. And I don't think we've talked about this one very, like, I mean, he was super special dog. No, like... And we can go into the story, but the bottom line is he was the Duvetore dog.
And eventually you contacted me because I really liked him. You knew that I liked him. And it was just the right perfect opportunity to buy him. So I did. And I collected him. A lot of times, like I collected him. I'm like, I'm going to have frozen semen from this dog until I'm done breeding in my life. But I made a very big mistake. I put all the semen into one bank in one hospital.
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Chapter 7: How important is historical knowledge in dog breeding?
And we will try to put something on our website to promote those things because Jean-Marie wrote very interesting books about history.
Yes, I think these are very... I mean, for anybody that starts or even people that have been with the breed for a while, when you look around, there is not much information or people don't know where to find the information. And this can be very, very, because it's such an interesting story. How did it all start with the malice? Was it, yeah, I don't want to even mention names.
I just want to hear how did you got stuck with the malice and the breeding and which dogs came to like play the important role for you?
Well, like I said, when I started with my Lake & Wine, the club in Lake, with Lucia, who teach me everything about the training, how it was done at that moment. Because, like I mentioned at the start, I have a university degree on how to train people for different kind of sports.
The psychology is there.
Yeah. And so Lucien, he trained me. I was his decoy for quite a long time. And at that moment, he was competing with Gaillard du Moscail, who was three times Belgian champion in the different categories in the ring sport. In our club, we had Lut, who was a veterinarian. And she owned a dog from Depotois. GV2 on a Biber daughter. And Lut decided to do a mating with Gaillard de Moscaille.
And I was there with my lacroix and said, yeah, but maybe I take a little malinois just for fun and to train. And so I bought pita from Lutz.
And pita was the mother of stone. Yes, exactly. And it was what, Elgos and pita?
Elgos pita. Yes, exactly. And so with Pita, we did a few little competitions in ring sport. But then she entered in my ballet. I started to breed with her. And at that moment, I started to know Luke very well because I met him quite a lot with Evelyn, with my lacquer law. Or when we go on Ring Sport with Lucien, we went for training in Dornick. I was always with Lucien, always.
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Chapter 8: What advice does Johan have for aspiring breeders?
Maybe it will come. Yeah, it will come. So he started breeding that and he was not so happy with that. And so in the early 80s, then he started to see some dogs in the NVPK and he started to know Mark de Welde. And Mark de Welde, he owned Jebiber and Cartouche. And then he started to use these dogs. And GV2 and Biber, they have the same father.
They are both out of Cartouche, but a different mother. Where GV2 is then a second time on the line of Arad, who is behind Cartouche. And so he started on that. And then he started to have his real, real good, strong dogs. And then the third wave was after he started to use Zergos. So that's with the three waves that I can say we've looked, that we can see.
And that is very interesting how we did it. And he used other lines where he said, hey, Johan, stay away from that because you see this and this and these problems. And I must say in all the years now we are nearly Nearly 30 years after 1985, we are 25, so it's 40 years. And those things that Luke told me and teach me about the bloodlines, I still can see that.
And people say, yeah, but that's not possible. But the traces, sometimes the look of the dogs, you can say, hey, they go back on that, they go back on that. And if you see the look, it goes also with temperament and the character, because Everything is genetic.
And if you see, let's say, in the 80s, the French dogs, they were quite small and they were all, let's name it, the Louboutins, they were small dogs. The males, they were the size of a very small female in the Baudouin lines. So that is, we can still see things that you say, hey, but this is typical French line. This is typical this line. This is typical NDBK line. Also of the look.
The look gives you already the information about the bloodline. And if you know what characteristics the bloodline is giving, you can have a...
good probability that the puppies will be all like the father or like the mother but okay if you do some line breeding you know what you do and you can know what you can expect if you do completely out crosses you know nothing you know nothing that's that's one of the big things in the breeding and everybody say yeah but in breeding and line breeding ah but
Without, I tell you, they ask me, they show me pedigrees. They say, Johan, what do you think? What can we get?
Right.
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