15th March 2005 - Well Crufts has come and gone. As in past years, it was exciting and exhausting. Just getting our 6 dogs to and from the car park was enough to finish you for the day! I was very pleased that just about everyone commented on the new, slimmer me. The nice thing is that I don't have to really think about it as the work around the kennel is keeping the weight off without any thought of dieting.

Though this year we did not take top honours, we were very pleased that the Anacan Canaans still made a good showing. 'Monkey' won Special Junior Bitch and 'Ziggy' won Reserve Best Dog from Veteran Dog class (he will be 9 this June!). 'Honey' was the surprise winner taking Reserve Best Bitch. I say surprise winner because she is so out-of-coat, having moulted it all just in time for Crufts. However, the judge said she had the best feet of all the entries on the day, and I must add, her movement is superb. She really looks like a pariah dog. And even though we didn't breed her, the Best Bitch and Best of Opposite Sex, Lorianna Lucky Star, came out of our lines as she was the last puppy sired by our Gvir Me Shaar Hagai At Anacan (the 2004 Top Stud Dog) and her dam, Anacan Forever Amber With Lorianna (the 2004 Top Brood Bitch) was, of course, bred by us. To see photos of the day Click here.

It was great to meet up with Anne Schonewald, who owns our Digger's father, Sivan Me Shaar Hagai ('Aiden'), along with her hubby, Ilan. It has literally been years, though we have spoken on the phone. She hadn't aged a day, which is something considering she has 4 children and is a child psychologist. She was very pleased when our 'Honey', an 'Aiden' granddaughter won Reserve Best Bitch.

8th March 2005 - Change is good, but it is also very hard. After spending most of last summer trying to find a new job, I finally got one at BUPA, only to have another dream realised at the same time ..... the purchase of a country property so our dogs can have a good life. We found a small boarding kennel and cattery on 2 acres in Irby In The Marsh in Lincolnshire near the seaside resort of Skegness. I never did start the job at BUPA, but I did do a temp job for 3 weeks prior to the move, which made packing up the house a bit hectic to say the least. But things became even more hectic when we moved in the evening of 30th November, with the help of our wonderful friends, Patrick Gold (who also drove our moving lorry) and Nigel Ackland. Not only did we have to try to unpack the lorry and situate our dogs, but I had a kennel and cattery chock full of boarders to attend to as well. Richard would, and is, still working at Heathrow for the time and is up here on his shifts off. So here I was in a new home, with loads of boxes to unpack and so many animals to care for that I didn't have time to do anything but work. Our kennel offers a lot of hands-on, which includes 3 walks a day for the dogs and I actually lost a half-stone (7 lbs for my American friends) the first month here. Exhaustion doesn't begin to describe it. On top of that, our next-door neighbours started complaining about everything after we'd been here only one week. Turns out that they just moved up here from Luton 2 years ago. The kennel has been in existence for 13 years! One would not expect someone to move next-door to a boarding kennel if they did not want to hear a dog bark occasionally, and in all honesty, I've never been to a kennel that was so quiet. The former owners were very choosy about the dogs they had here, and we do have a very friendly customer base with very friendly dogs and cats boarding with us. It was disheartening to move up from a terraced house to the country, thinking that there could be no problems as this was a licensed boarding kennel, and then to have these people start complaining to the council. This past year was the first one ever in which I did not send out Christmas cards, but I just did not have the time. So if you usually hear from me at Christmas, I really haven't forgotten you. Additionally, just prior to our move we found out that Richard's dad, whom I love dearly, has a blood disorder ... he isn't producing platelets. This means that he could literally bleed to death from a bruise. This has been a big worry and dad did spend the week prior to and following Christmas up here with us. Richard stays with him when he is down in London and he seems to be doing okay at the moment.

Things seemed to have settled down and as I've gotten used to the workload (which is quite heavy when you add in all our own dogs), I am able to cope much better. I am down 4 dress sizes since this time last year, so that's a good thing as well. Now I just have to learn to drive so I can get to dog shows as the law requires someone to be on the premises of a boarding facility 24-hours a day. We can't afford to hire someone to come in everytime I want to go to a show, and if Richard is kennel-sitting, he can't drive me.

We have hired someone to come in for Crufts on our show date of March 11th. It will be our first show since October (we had to miss a few we had entered because of our move). Our dogs haven't even been on lead in all that time. I had expected to be able to spend a lot of time working with them, but the workload here didn't allow for that. I also had to forego breeding Lyndsay until later this year. All of our bitches came into heat in January and there was just no way I could take them abroad for breeding at that point and I wasn't going to breed any of my girls just to breed them. As a result, we may end up breeding more than one of them around July/August. Watch this space for details.

Our new contact details are shown on the Table of Contents page. To my knowledge, I have answered all my emails these last few months, but if you have tried to contact me and I haven't replied, I do apologise and ask that you email me again.

I have a lot of updating to do on this website ... photos of my Remy/Lottie litter to post up, for example ... and hope I will get the chance to do a bit every week. I hope you will come back to see what we're up to!