I’m Annika Wirman-Fagerlund, I’m 40 years young and I’m married with 2 children, 15-year-old Oscar and 10-year-old Olivia. We live in a big old house close to Turku in southern Finland with our 4 afghan hounds and our cat Osmo. I work as an account manager for a company that sells text messaging services to other companies.

My mother bought our first dog when I was 10-years old. It was a dalmatian male, who tried to bite the judge at his first show. Nevertheless, we were bitten by the dogshowbug and for the next 10 years we attended dog shows almost every weekend in Finland and also in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The dalmatian male was never shown again, but my mother bought us a dalmatian bitch, who became an international champion, and then next an old english sheep dog, a maltese, a standard poodle, a löwchen and an irish setter. At one time we had 10 dogs, all of course living with us as normal household pets.

I competed in junior handling and also showed most of our dogs myself. We were very fortunate to have such succesful dogs, they all became champions and at almost every show at least one of them won the breed. We had BIS-and group-winners and I remember one show, where our dogs won so many different things, that we hardly fit in the car with all the trophies. My mother bred maltese and we went on show and breeding trips to the rest of the Scandinavia, the Netherlans and Germany.

When I met my husband in 1992 and moved to live with him, I decided never to have dogs again. Well that decision was not to last, since in early 1994 we bought our first afghan. We had already got an irish setter male from Australia, but when my husband saw an afghan at a show, he wanted one. I had always admired afghans at shows, but my mother was told, that afghans and small dogs can’t be kept together. That of course wasn’t true and also my mother bought an afghan later.

We were very lucky to have Multi Ch WW-98 Choice Ain’t A Loser as our first glimpse of the breed. She was a wonderful dog, not just to show, but at home also. Since her there was really no question of the breed we wanted to live with.

I bred my first litter in 1998, but I gave it under Choice-prefix, since our son had just been born and I thought I wouldn’t have the time to breed. But then of course I changed my mind, got my own prefix and bred my first own litter in 2001. I also bought a horse the same year and when our daughter was born couple of years later, we didn’t have time to attend dog shows for almost five years.

In 2008 the second Pramya-litter was born and it started a new era in our lives. Since then we’ve bred two more litters and we’ve also been showing our dogs quite often. Thankfully my husband Jan helps with the dogs a lot and also shows them if necessary.

I’m deeply honored to be asked to judge at the prestigious Tammsvik show. I’ve showed my dogs there few times, but I have never dreamed of judging there. I’m really looking forward to it and hope the day will be enjoyable not only for me but also everybody attending.