About Us

We are a German-Russian family and now live in a village near Moscow (Russia).
Our kennel name - Al Naqawa - is registered with FCI and means "the pure, the best" in Arabic. Our aim is to breed healthy and sound Salukis that are beautiful AND fully functional. In our breeding we will combine fresh bloodlines from countries/areas of origin (Israel, Jordan, Sinai - see the pedigrees of Nassim, Laflaf and Bonny) and well known Scandivian lines (see the pedigrees of Dusya and Bonny).

• Mirko Wagner: This is our Daddy. Whenever he has a spare moment Mirko likes to make different kites and let them fly. He is also crazy about all kinds of creepy crawlies (he studied entomology) and would spend hours trying to take a picture of a special ant or a butterfly. We already had two species of mantis lodging in our kitchen for a couple of weeks (in a glass, of course!) whom Mirko, Xenia and Lisa fed on live flies. He came to the rescue when a huge locust was sitting on Lisa's book shelf and we were all paralysed with fear looking into the beast's alien eyes.
  
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• Xenia Wagner: The list of Xenia's hobbies is quite long indeed: dogs, reading, hiking, archery, roller blading etc. etc. She can beat even me in reading speed and can spend hours training Toffee a new trick so I must interfere to spare Toffee a nervous breakdown. At our very first dog show Xenia simply went and came third in Junior Handling and this with Nassim who was 6 months old and as inexperienced as one can imagine.
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• Lisa Wagner: At the time most children are just learning how to do their laces Lisa was able to create hairstyles which would make a professional hairdresser jealous. She also likes to draw and is really good at it. For my birthday she gave me a wonderful drawing picturing a hunting scene with Bedouins, Salukis, hares and gazelles.
  
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• Svetlana Panova: It's me. I love my noisy family and like books (our local book shop gives me 10% discount - an obvious sign of deep sympathy for my husband and his account) and dogs (their number still doesn't grow as fast as the books'). The short and irregular breaks between cooking for my family and training the dogs I try to use for my translation work.
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© 2003, Svetlana Panova,
Xenia Wagner