My name is Ludivine Fitzwater and with my husband Dale we live in Ash on the border between Surrey and Hampshire.

Before coming to England, I had had two miniature poodles. The first one was called Bambou and the second one Ipso.

I left France for England in 1998 and I started working as a language teacher in Surrey but I rented in a small house which did not allow me to have Ipso so he had to stay with my parents in France. By 2002, I had met my husband and moved in with him, in a flat with a garden. Unfortunately, Ipso went to the rainbow bridge before we could arrange for him to come and live with us.

In 2003, after we got married, I felt the time was right for us to welcome a dog in our home. However there were some restrictions… First, as we live in a flat, we couldn't have a big dog. Then, we wanted to find an intelligent and playful dog that will 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 searched the internet to find out more about them. 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, reserved towards strangers, never nervous.)

Our search for a Shetland sheepdog puppy had started.

We looked up websites for sheltie puppies and in July 2004, Quito joined us. Originally we just wanted a pet but Karen (Quito's breeder) asked to take him to a show whilst he was staying at hers in December 2004. We agreed and Quito started his show career... We went to Windsor Champ show with Karen and that was it, we were hooked!

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 was confirmed as ours.

From then on, our lives revolved around our dogs, walking, showing, training, playing, agility. We love taking them everywhere we go (holidays, shows, France etc...). After Quito, we welcomed Milo and Bouba in 2005. and we even moved to a bigger house in January 2007, to have more space for our shelties and start our own breeding. Lizzie joined us in January 2007 (she joined her new family in May 2010) and Luna in May 2007. Luna will be our foundation bitch for our very small breeding kennel and we're hoping to add to our little riot of shelties in the years to come.