The Border
collie dynasty began for me with BlueTopaz. She was a blue merle bitch,
bred from my daughter’s black and white collie Genna.
When I met Phil he was without a dog, but had very fond memories of his
mother and daughter pair of Cara and Shona. It ensured that any future dogs
we kept would be Border Collies.
As
Topaz aged and became quite ill (She had pemphigus an auto-immune problem)
we decided to get another blue merle collie. After much searching we eventually
found a litter for sale. Neither of us had seen a red merle collie before
and Phil was smitten with the one in the litter, whereas I wanted the blue
merle that we had intended to buy. We bought both !!
Many thanks to Michele Dunn and her family for allowing us to buy Dunnorthac
Sapphire and her sister Dunnorthac Ruby.
Ruby died 2.5 years later from eating a few slug pellets that she scavenged
out of the bonfire ashes.
When we decided
to breed from Sapphire it seemed the right time to register our own kennel
prefix. We initially wanted Whinhill, the name of our house, but that was
already taken. So we ended up with our second choice name of Nyumbani, which
means ‘Home’ in Swahili. Sapphire had it added to her name and
is now officially Dunnorthac Sapphire of Nyumbani.
Our
dogs have 5 acres of garden and paddock to run around in and this outdoor
country life suits them very well.