I left France for England in 1998 and started working as a language teacher in Surrey. I met my husband in 2002 and after we got married in 2003, I felt the time was right for us to welcome a dog in our home. However there were some restrictions… First, as we lived in a flat, we couldn't have a big dog. We also wanted to find an intelligent and playful dog that would be easy to train as Dale had no experience as a dog owner.

In December 2003, in Richmond Park, we saw a family walking what looked like rough collies to me. As we got closer I realised they were smaller and had a very sweet expression. Dale told me they were shelties so as soon as we got home I set about researching the breed on the internet. Once I had found the breed standard, it became obvious that the Shetland Sheepdog would be the perfect pet for us. We loved his look but also his characteristics (Alert, gentle, intelligent, strong and active) and his temperament (Affectionate and responsive to his owner.

Our search for a Shetland sheepdog puppy had started.

We looked up websites for sheltie puppies and in July 2004, Quito joined our small family. Whilst looking after him while we were on holidays, Karen (Quito's breeder) took him to a show. The following summer, we went to Windsor Champ show with Karen and that was it, we were hooked! Quito had started his show career. I soon learnt to show Quito myself and in March 2005, Quito went to Crufts. All through 2005, we thought about getting our affixe and in November, Fleurdemai became our Kennel Name

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Since then, our lives have revolved around our dogs, walking, showing, training, playing, agility. We love taking them everywhere we go (holidays, shows, France etc...). After Quito came Milo and Bouba in 2005 and we even moved to a bigger house in 2006, to have more space for more shelties and start our own breeding. Luna joined us in 2007 and became our foundation bitch and we're hoping to add to our little riot of shelties in the years to come.

Our latest addition is Penny who joined us in early 2011.

Click here to discover how we chose our dogs names/ our kennel name!