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Welcome to Our website.
Welcome to our website, through this we hope to share with you some of the wonderful memories created over the past 34 years of our involvement in the wonderful world of purebred dogs.
Barrie grew up in England, an only child who had all manner of pets form the local pet shop to keep him company ranging from guinea pigs to a Sealyham terrier – while Jean grew up on a dairy farm in northern Tasmania and along with the farm animals had a special cat that she snuck into bed with her each night. Her mum often tells the story of putting the cat out only to check the room later and find the cat back in on the bed. This continued for some weeks before it was found that Jean was opening the window after she had been put to bed and calling the cat in.
At the time of their marriage in 1973 Barrie was posted to Papua New Guinea with the Army and by the time Jean arrived 4 weeks later they were already a family of 3. Barrie had been to the RSPCA and bought a little Boxer cross puppy named Princess as a welcome present. It took a whole 2 days before they were back at the RSPCA taking home Princess’s mum Honey a pure bred boxer.
As their time to leave PNG grew near they knew that they could not bring Princess and Honey home with them and so found a family willing to take the 2 of them on. They also decided that they wanted another dog when they got back to Australia so the hunt began. It was narrowed down to 2 breeds – Barrie wanted an OES as he remembered them from his childhood in England and Jean wanted an Irish Setter as the family doctor had one called Rufus which he would bring with him when making house calls. Jean was also rather taken with breed of dog called Puli which she had seen in the National Dog Annual.
So it came that on their return they had contacted Grace Barlow of the Movama (OES) kennels in Sydney and Birkenmoor (Irish setter) kennels in Victoria and Birkenmoor Piplika (Piplika) greeted them on their arrival in Melbourne in September 2005, she was joined in early 2006 by Movama Blue Beauty (Delilah). Grace had convinced them to try showing to help them meet new people outside the army circle.
We are very grateful to Grace for this as over the years we have made some wonderful friends in the dog world and ventured to some amazing places. Very early in our show career we met Rex & Ros Lowe & their Irish setters, Annette & John Green of Talwaha Boston Terriers, Richard Watson Kerry Blue Terrier and his late father Jim Watson Cairn Terriers Heather Collet (OES & TT) and Kaye Klap (Labrador) who all has remained good friends over the years.
We were fortunate to have some wonderful mentors in the breed – the late Jeanie Short ( Jolifoot OES, Sydney), Trevor Watson (Trubshaw OES SA) & Denise Humphries (Jindella OES, Vic). In the late 70’s and early 80’s we travelled to Sydney to attend the breed show and spring fair almost yearly. We enjoyed the hospitably given Jeannie and Col Short and soaked in the many discussions held on the bobtail after the champ show by such people as Jim & Meg Hull, Liras Gaul & Pat Lansdowne
So to today... Jean finally got her Puli in 1982. Hobo was her shadow for almost 17 years and then in 2002 Ms Xena came into our lives. We added a Tibetan terrier to the family in 1990 and currently have Kammy’s daughter and 2 great grandkids with us. Along the way we have also had our wonderful Winston (British Blue) and currently Ms Blu (short haired exotic) completes the family. We have bred 14 OES and 3 TT champions to date and with the help of our friend Heather currently campaigning the baby of the family Jeb.
We hope you enjoy our website as much as we have enjoyed putting it together
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Barrie & Jean
Barrie & Jean Macdonald Hobart, TAS, Australia Phone : 03 62486323 Email : jmacdonald@bridgeby.com.au 00004305 Visitors |
