About Us

Garroway Bullmastiffs was founded by Sylvia and Tom DaSilva.  We are located in central British Columbia, Canada.  We “experienced” our first Bullmastiff initially when we adopted a fawn mixed-breed from the local SPCA, in 1992.  (see photo to right).  “Samson” was an incredible dog and had quite the following of admirers and people couldn’t resist the comedian side to his personality. Unfortunately his time with us was short lived, and we were devastated. Of course, our next endeavor was to obtain another Bullmastiff.  This time a purebred.
A beautiful red male named Khalsa’s K.O. Kasmir came into our lives in 1993 and was an automatic winner of our hearts.  KO taught us important lessons about the breed, and made our love for it grow stronger. To this day, at  11 1/2  years old, he is still an impressive figure in our home.   KO can be found in the pedigrees of every Garroway-bred dog today.

While our kennel actively participates in conformation events with excellent success, we feel that Championship are simply but one of the many tools available to guide us to breed quality representations of the breed.   Our own  breeding program is focused on producing sound (in mind & body), functional and typey bullmastiffs, and always with the goal of preserving, protecting that which IS bullmastiff.   We use the CKC  Standard as our model in our quest.  Our bullmastiffs are very social animals who interact with our young family of 5 children, so stable, ‘people social’ temperaments are a prerequisite, as it should be for all breeders.  This is a large and powerful working dog in which stability of the mind is a necessity and ill-temperaments must be removed from the gene pool, without exception.  

At Garroway, every breeding is carefully planned and extensively researched, to optimize our chances of producing the very best WE can.  This takes time to do properly.  We incorporate various health testing on our dogs such as hips, elbows, heart, thyroid and eyes (whenever CERF is available in our area).   We do not breed often (usually only one litter per year) and then only when we need something for our own breeding program.  All of our pet puppies are placed on a CKC Non-breedingregistration with a spay/neuter agreement, and our show/breeding potential puppies are placed on a CKC Co-ownership registration until certain criteria have been met.  (health clearances, championship).