The Story Behind Blackfell
Before we met we had always had dogs in our families, not always shepherds, especially in Jerry's case, their most memorable dog was 'Biggles' a loveable rogue of a Beagle. My family had a few shepherds,or as they called them then alsations! but I always loved them and that love carried on when we metand it wasn't long before we had our first pup, a shepherd cross from a rescue centre called Fiver because that's how much we paid for him! unfortunatly we lost Five when he was 9 years old to a mysterious 'illness' which the vet could not explain. What happened was one morning, his spine was very tender and after a couple of days he could not use his back legs atall, he had an x-ray, they thought it might be a slipped disc which seemed the most reasonable explanation but the x-ray showed nothing. However he kept going for another week, in the vet's, ended up on a drip and eventually we realised nothing could be done for him so we gave him sleep.

' The next Chapter '
We then had, a succession of rescue shepherds and went through a lot more heartbreak losing them to epilepsy, hip diysplacia,weak heart,etc and would have given up if not for our love of the breed, I must say that all of these girls gave their hearts to us completely and hopefully enjoyed their last days and for that we are happy. However we decided that enough was enough and we did not want to go on picking up backstreet breeders cast offs, I know that not all the dogs in rescue can be attributed to this but if they were bred properly, by responsible breeders this should never have happened, none of these dogs were tattoed or tracable to the breeders and so we decided that if we wanted another dog we would go to a reputable breeder and although this wouldn't guarantee us a faultless dog, at least it would help if the breeder had been concientious when planning and rearing the litter, and hopefully there for advice in the future!
Enter Max! aka Tyglen Cass. Now, this did not happen as planned, he came to us as a 10 month old on his way to the dogs home, having been to three homes previously (nobody thought to tell Alma, his breeder!)Anyway, a friend of mine had taken him in and knew of our intentions to look for a well bred pup but could not bear to take him to the dogs home and asked if we were interested. Me being a soft touch said yes at once, Jerry was more sceptical but anyway, as is usually the way with us women, I won and along he came. My god, what had we let ourselves in for? it was like letting a tornado into our home! he's now five and hasn't changed a bit. We were lucky though as he came with his pedigree and KC papers. At this time we knew were pretty clueless as to breeders in our area etc and contacted Alma Tigh who bred him. She was great and offered to take him back if we couldn't keep him, she put us in touch with the Northumberland and Durham traing club and we went along, so that was how we became interest in showing and eventually breeding.
We were bittin by the bug well and truly and had some fun showing Max. He did quite well and has a few wins and good placings under his belt. Unfortunatly he has an aversion to having stranger look at his mouth and grumbles at them, and apart from that he doesn't particularly likd being in the ring so he now lies around the house, scaring anyone who walks past!
In his favour though, he will welcome anyone we let in and love attention, loves the kids (all four of them and their legions of friends)and is generally a lovely lad to live with.

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