Unlike a large number of people who own and show the breed I am unable to say that I had always loved and wanted to own a Rough Collie. I could never watch Lassie on the television as it always made me cry. I grew up surrounded by a variety of pets and have always had a great love for all animals. My Grandfather showed Cocker Spaniels when I was young and so did a friend of my parents. I used to enjoy accompanying them to the local open shows when I was a child. When Carl and I were married in 1980 I insisted on having a dog so we bought a Yorkshire terrier, who I named Penny. We later acquired a cross breed from the RSPCA who we named Sandy. They were both a part of our family for 16 years and it was when Penny died that I decided that I would like to buy a pedigree dog to show at the local Open shows. I saw Rough Collie puppies advertised in our local paper, went to see them and before I knew it had caught the “Collie Bug”!

We had several false starts mainly because we made the age old mistake of not taking our time, talking to experienced breeders and thinking about the type of collie we wanted. We thought the dogs we had bought were beautiful and we loved them. We couldn’t understand why the judges didn’t think the same. It all changed for us because of simple conversation and two very kind people namely John and Lynne Stinchcombe who owned the Delbar Kennels. It was at Paignton Show in 1995 while feeling very disappointed at being unplaced yet again that I asked Lynne “What do I have to do to win something” to which she replied you need to get a good quality showdog – or words to that effect. Lynne said that they had a show potential puppy at home and that we were welcome to go home with them after the show to see it if we wanted to. Needless to say we did and we took the puppy home with us that night. That is where our real journey began as that puppy was our “Chloe “Champion Delbar Cherish the Love!

In 1997 we mated Chloe to Brilyn Goldfinger at Lynswed and decided that we should register ourselves an affix. So where did Salsina come from? I get embarrassed when people asking me that question as the explanation is so silly. When we applied for an affix we chose a variety of words that combined our names, the names of our children, our dogs etc. We needed one more word to complete the form so I just used Salsina which was the name of the sauce I was using to make spaghetti bolognaise for tea while Carl was completing the form. Guess what - only one word was acceptable to the Kennel Club . And what does Salsina mean- Little tomato sauce!

This litter produced Salsina Such a Dream at Delbar (Poppy) who returned to us when Lynne and John stopped showing. She was always well placed at Championship shows and won the Reserve CC at Midland Collie Club under Audrey White.