life with Livestock guardians is never boring. we love to share the adventures of dogs.
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Our journey started about 11 years ago. We went to Crufts to find out about the breeds we were interested in and meet the breeders and the dogs. Discover dogs is such a great place to learn about dogs and meet them and people who live with them.
We went with the intention of learning about 3 breeds, samoyed, chow chow and Leonberger. We met all three breeds and spoke to the people who live with them then as we continued wondering round we came across a breed that initially looked similar to the leonberger but smaller so we stopped and spoke to the people on the stand. This breed was the Estrela Mountain dog, we learned they were classed as a rare breed and were live stock guardians. Although initially they looked like Leo’s to us pet people we were soon educated about the differences because the Estrela was not a designed breed they came from the mountains and were therefore not messed with but also not common so finding puppies wasn’t easy. We weren’t in a rush so this wasn’t a problem. From then we spent the next 3 years visiting Discover Dogs at Crufts to learn more about the breed and what they are like to live with.
When we were in a position to get a puppy we made contact with a few breeders to see who had puppies. The breeder who had suitable pups was Gill Reid of Milagre. We had hoped for a male but she only had females left so we spent some time with Gill and her dogs. We agreed if she was happy we would be honoured to have her last available female come and live with us. Gill explained she had started vaccinations so wasn’t happy to let the puppy Willow leave until she had finished the course. This wasn’t a problem and we respected she was doing her best for the pup so we paid our deposit and agreed to return in a few weeks to collect her.
We collected our puppy Milagre Gotta Feelin, pet name Willow 2 weeks after meeting her. She was a bundle of fluff and settled in well. Part of the agreement with her breeder was that Willow needed to be shown to prove she was a good Estrela, we weren’t really interested in showing but said we would give it a go. We signed up to some ring craft classes to learn what we needed to do and we entered her into some shows her breeder was going to be at so that we had someone we knew who could advise us what we needed to do.
