They love people.
They love children particularly.
And they will actually get on with any creature which will get on with them.
Often people may have a very old cat who is really crotchety with the entire world.
Well a Vizsla like to believe the whole world wants to play with it, and it will just keep
on coming.
They want to please you, they want to work with you and they're a very biddable dog.
It's a word in gundogs that's used a lot - but it means they just want to co-operate and
do all we can to please you.
That's the Vizsla temperament.
Obviously - Hungarian Vizsla - comes from Hungary.
The Vizsla part is very simple - essential it's "Pointer".
So if you think of Hungarian Pointer.
And in Hungary they're often referred to as the Yellow Hound.
A stunning looking dog.
It's a gundog - belongs to the HPR Group, which stands for Hunt, Point and Retrieve.
So this is a working dog.
They may look like a fabulous pet, it may not necessarily make a fabulous pet if you
do not meet it's gundog needs.
They are very loyal, very friendly dogs, but can be a little bit reserved from time to
time, with strangers and do like a job of work to do.
But they are an active dog and will fit in very well as part of the family.
Beautiful dogs, beautiful colour.
Very high energy dogs.
We would look to re-home them with a very active family who have plenty of time and
energy to keep up with them.
They'd certainly keep your family fit.
They are very sensitive, they're known as the "velcro Vizslas" - they just love to be
touching you.
So when they're tired, they're fabulous to touch and to cuddle up to - but you've got
to give them enough mental and physical stimulation.
So you need to join a club that does gundog type activities to really get that nose going.
If you can't give the dog an hour or so's exercise - good open exercise - then do think
hard about it.
This is a dog that if you confine it through the day, you're going to have some damage
done.
It's "Idle hands..." basically, and they will find a level of mischief to get into.
High energy dog, and if it doesn't get enough mental and physical stimulation it will chew.
They're a beautiful dog, but they're not necessarily for everybody.
They're a very bouncy dog.
And the Vizsla doesn't change - bless! - what it is as a 14 week old puppy is probably going
to be the same when it's fourteen years old.
It remains a puppy nearly all of its life.
Very very playful, loves people, loves children - and we always say, be very careful with
toddlers.
Because a Vizsla loves children, but it will knock toddlers over when they're playing with
them.
The only difference I would say with a wire is there's a greater sensitivity sometimes.
If you think of the wire-haired Vizsla as 60-70% temperament exactly the same, but without
that great energy bubbling through all the time, that's essentially the difference.
The wire coat was bred for harsh conditions - but the downside of that is, the Wires like
to go out in any weather.
The wetter, the colder the better.
The smooth coat doesn't need a lot work at all.
If we can use a soft glove or a hand glove two or three times a week, just working through
the coat, it's almost a thick massage more than anything else.
The wire coat is obviously that much more dense and longer.
And what you tend to do with that is either a deep brush, a curry comb or just light combing.
You just work through the bearding, the feathering etc - just take the mud off it.
The only thing to watch out for from more of a health point of view with the coat is
the dog - particularly the wire - is growing hair on its feet all the time.
And if it's going through a lot of mud, you need to get that out.
Often as not you can soak it out, but sometimes you have to get in there and just break it
up or cut it out.
Leave it in there and you'll have sore feet.
From a health point of view, there aren't a lot of problems - one of the reasons is
these are relatively young breeds which have not been exploited.
So we haven't got hip displasia problems, we haven't got shoulder problems etc - if
you got to the right people who have got a background in the breed, you shouldn't have
any difficulties at all.
So you haven't got any long term hereditary difficulties in any.
The only problem we ever had - and we're going back twenty or thirty years - there was a
hint of epilepsy at one point, but fortunately - and it's a measure of the people that have
these dogs - people stood up and said our blood lines have got it, make sure you don't
use them.
And that's one of the joys of a relatively small breed, people talk to eachother and
they protect the breed as a consequence.