Little Shining Angels is a small, family kennel devoted to black and chocolate Terriers and Biewer Terriers. Every puppy grows up in our living room, not in a cage — surrounded by people, everyday sounds and love.
Our breeding dogs are health-tested, and puppies go home vaccinated, socialised and with full instructions for the ongoing care of their silky coat.
For us, dogs are healthy first. Everything else, including beauty, comes after. That is why we breed thoughtfully and patiently, because we believe health is the foundation of a happy dog's life.
To keep a diverse and healthy gene pool, we carefully source our sires abroad, in different countries. This avoids excessive inbreeding and ensures our puppies come from genuinely different, unrelated lines — which is extremely important for the breed's health.
At the same time we protect the purity of the colour lines. The chocolate line stays chocolate, the black stays black. This preserves the character of each colour and means we breed deliberately, not by chance. The Biewer Terrier has its own history and its own standard; the American Kennel Club granted it full recognition in 2021, while the Fédération Cynologique Internationale does not yet recognise it.
In breeding chocolate Terriers and black Terriers, the breadth of the gene pool matters most to us. We look for sires all over the world, not only close to home, because this is the only way to preserve diversity and avoid close relatedness. The first criterion is always health, the second temperament, and only then colour and appearance. We keep the colour lines pure, but never at the expense of health.
We are the only kennel in Slovenia breeding black Terriers and chocolate Terriers (black and chocolate yorkies) under the Kennel Club of Slovenia (KZS), one of the few kennels breeding Biewer Terriers, and one of the few in Europe breeding these colours selectively and deliberately.
Petrischa Robnik
Breeder · Little Shining Angels
I do not come from a family that bred dogs. Nobody taught me this and I inherited nothing. Everything I know, I learned because I wanted to know.
By training I am a registered nurse with a master's degree in health and social management. I am currently a doctoral student at the Faculty of Organisational Sciences. I have also completed pedagogical-andragogical training, and for years I have pursued informal education in personal growth, spirituality, human psychology and canine psychology.
I consider my mission in nursing complete. What remained is what drove me even then: at heart I am a researcher. I hold my own researcher code in the Slovenian bibliography. I am drawn to new paths, different approaches and above all gentler approaches. I want to understand how a living being really works, human and animal alike.
Dogs and other animals have been with me since I had a family of my own. But I decided to breed almost six years ago, when a chocolate Terrier (chocolate yorkie) named Sindy came into my life. She was not a plan. She was a beginning.
I love children very much, and I believe my character shows itself most clearly when there are puppies in our home. That particular, playful energy fills the house, and me with it. When there are no puppies, an emptiness remains in me and I can hardly wait for the next litter.
I love watching them. I love investing in myself and in them. I love grooming them, I love taking them to shows, and most of all I simply love cuddling them. That fills my heart.
Entering the world of cynology was not easy. Quite the opposite.
I met obstacles where I expected open doors. My questions often went unanswered, and nobody offered help. I admit this hurt at first, because I believed the same love of dogs connected us all.
So I looked for another way. I put my questions to breeders abroad who were willing to share their knowledge, and I buried myself in the literature. An enormous amount of literature. Everything I read and learned I brought into my own kennel, into my daily life, and tested to see what actually works.
I learned from the good moments and just as much from the hard ones. Every challenge within my own breeding taught me something, including the ones I would rather not have faced.
Today I look back without resentment. Precisely because it was not easy for me, I see my own door differently: anyone who comes to me with a question gets an answer.
I strive for constant excellence and I am healthily self-critical.
Every piece of criticism, positive or negative, is an alarm for me. Not a reason to defend myself, but a reason to check. Is it true? If it is, I put it right. If it is not, I know I am on the right path. I have learned the most from the harder criticism, and it is what has made me a better breeder.
I believe a breeder who never doubts themselves does not progress.
My current focus is a systematic and in-depth study of dogs. Not quickly, but thoroughly.
I want to understand how a stable dog comes about. When that planning begins, what happens in the first weeks, and what I can do so that a puppy leaves me genuinely prepared for a new life. I am also studying canine genetics in depth, because I believe responsible breeding is not possible without understanding inheritance.
I also examine my own relationship with my dogs. How to improve it, where I make mistakes, what I can do better. This is work that never ends.
I believe in positive motivation. In reward, not punishment. In a gentle approach that is nonetheless not permissive.
My dogs are not spoiled in the sense of being ill-mannered. They receive all the love they need, a safe embrace when one is needed, and clear correction when that is called for. The two do not exclude each other. In fact, one without the other is incomplete.
For these little bundles I would do anything. And that is exactly what I want our kennel's name to stand for: not only black Terriers, chocolate Terriers and Biewer Terriers, but the way we live with them.
