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- Shannmie Kennels -
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"Shelties, Rough Collies & Japanese Spitz"
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History Continued...
Anyway Toby was joined after a few years by a Blue Merle, and a bit latter by a
Tri colour, none it turned out where any good for the show ring, but that is how
we gained some experience.
We heard from a friend that someone was wanting to find a new home for a tri colour
bitch, we went and saw her, and she was the first dog we had in the show ring, and
we did quite well with her at open shows. Championship shows were out of our league
at this time.
We thought it would be a nice idea for us to have our own Prefix, so we dually applied
to the English Kennel Club and Shannmie Shetland Sheepdogs where on there way. How did
we arrive at Shannmie – well Shann is part of Shannon which is my middle name and
Mie is from Michael.
Several years into showing our dogs, we became aware of something called the Irish Circuit.
This sounded interesting and we looked into it further, and met one of our good friends
through it. Maureen introduced us to Ireland and the Irish circuit. We spent quite a few
years travelling over to the shows, and making two Irish Champions up in the process. Our
first was Winky (Landover Nutshell), who was made up, after only five shows and two circuits,
our new Irish friends threatened to sink the boat after that. Our second was a little bit
harder, Charlie (Landover Eirwen).
Years later we had an opportunity to move, and we opted for a ‘quieter’ life and decided to
move to Ireland. We have continued to show our dogs and occasional breed some pups.
Our aim is to try and improve the breed by bringing some new blood into the Shetland Sheepdogs
in Ireland. We bought our property in Ireland, in a town call Athboy in County Meath. We were
looking for a house with no close neighbours and with land for the dogs to run around in.
We found the house after a long few days of looking, and a ‘we might as well look’ attitude.
The house was in need of work, but liveable. There was an acre field at the back, and the best
part was there were outbuildings to one side, which could soon be transformed into kennels
for the dogs. At the other side of the house was a good sized ‘jungle’ which has been slowly
transformed into a garden. We are continuing to alter the house into what we want, but time is
the difficult part as we both go out to work. Winter months though we have time as there are not
many shows, but the weather is usually bad so any work outside is hopeless. In fact we have grown
webbed feet since moving to Ireland.
As a birthday present one year I was presented with a little white bundle of fluff, my first
Japanese Spitz. Bred by the first person to bring the breed into England. Sadly we were never
able to show her, and though we have four generations of Japanese Spitz we have never gotten into
showing them properly. We have at the moment a promising young dog, who has been to the showing ring
a few times and done quite well. We are founder members of the Northern Japanese Spitz Club in England,
and involved with the Japanese Spitz Club here in Ireland, which is a friendly club, and takes an interest
in the well being of the breed. Michael is interested in showing Rough Collies and we introduced a Collie
to the kennel about five years ago. We now have two, a Tri bitch, who has done very well in the show ring
and a blue merle dog,which we breed, called Shadow, he has done very well in the show ring, and has to date
five green stars. Michael is involved with the All Ireland Rough Collie Club.
Back
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Copyright Michael & Gail Fenton 2004
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