We are Andrew and June Cairns and we started showing dogs in the early 80's when we got our first dog which was a Cocker Spaniel. We did not set out with the intention of buying a puppy we could show, we only intended to get a puppy to share our home with, so we bought an adorable red cocker spaniel who we named chester. As he grew so did his coat and we did not know how to tame it so we took him along to the Scottish Cocker Spaniel Club for advice.
There we were given advice on how to manage his coat, but a helpful person said to us the immortal words " that's a really nice puppy, you should show him". So it started, we entered him in a show for cocker spaniels and being complete novices entered him in most classes in the schedule, well we did not know any better. We went along to the show and took our puppy into the ring, he won best dog puppy and was placed in most classes, so that was us bitten by the bug with a fistful of rosettes to bring home.
As the years went on we added to our experience and to our cocker family and ended up with 4 dogs which we showed. However as we had a young family showing was limited to fairly local shows at Open level as we could not travel great distances. In the end our dogs lived out there lives with us and the showing came to a natural end.
Around 2 years ago, with the family grown up and work commitments changed we found ourselves with time to share with dogs again. We looked around many breeds and decided the dobermann was for us. After much research we contacted Jay and Martin Horgan at Aritaur, they were very helpful and eventually they picked Ava for us from their V litter. We had decided we would like to have two pups to run on together so Jay introduced us to Joanne Sanderson of Jodaseen who at the time had a litter of pups from Aritaur Histabraq and her bitch Stella. Jay travelled up to Whitby with us and helped us pick a lovely brown dog, Max.
These two dobermanns, Max and Ava, have really inspired us in this breed, they are fantastic characters with super temprements and a credit to the kennels who bred them. We have also discovered what many others before us have is that dobes get under your skin somehow and now we are smitten with the breed.