We purchased our first Dobermann in 1986 as a pet and household protector. We have been hooked on the breed ever since.

We joined the Dobermann Club of the Cape, and thus the world of dogs became part of our life. We started with basic obedience and discovered that Nandi was clever and enjoyed herself immensely. The club helped and guided us in the right direction to become responsible Dobermann owners. We saw that a bored Dobermann was very destructive, a nuisance to itself, its owners as well as the neighbours. This meant a lot of effort put in to keep her busy with agility, obedience and so forth.

We enjoyed the fun of exhibiting our dogs, and produced our first Champion Sharbara Cotton Baron in 1990. Meeting so many people we realised that the imported German & other European dogs had a different attitude in them than what we were seeing locally. So it became a goal to achieve this in our bloodlines.

In the meantime we campaigned quite a few of our breeding in the show ring and had great pleasure of declaring them Breed Champions.

We wanted to improve our blood line and we were able to do this by using firstly, Torlander Mismark of Sylclos, a son of Odin vom Norden Stamm & Alice von't Groene Land. Then we included Felix Vom Norden Stamm in our program. We now felt we were on the right track to get dogs that had the temperament that we were looking for.

We wanted to do more interesting things than just the show ring. We had the conformation but needed the drive.

We were so lucky that our close friend Hymie Liebmann brought Am. Ch. Cara's Skeeter into South Africa. We used Skeeter with our favourite girl Ch Gud Goli Ms Moli. This was a great combination!. Two puppies stand out from that breeding:

• Ch Sharbara Jive Wire of Pandemonium (Jessie) was rated to be "the kind of puppy who comes along once every five years"under internationally reknowned Dobermann judge Jens Kollenberg, who gave her Best puppy on Show, a 2-point CC & Reserve Best of Breed at 10 months of age at the Cape Dobermann Specialty Show.
• Ch Sharbara Jive Bak n' Black (Joshua) who lives with us, our best friend and the most wonderful dog. He is everything we want in our Dobermann. faithful, protective and loving clown. He is working for his Sch Hund and I do enjoy him - he is such a clown.

We have continued to look for those bloodlines that we feel would benefit us. The latest we included was Faramir Casa di Oz of Hysand. He also has added another dimension to our kennel.

---