We, like many others, have always had a passion for dogs and between us we have had various breeds including, Great Danes, a Beagle, a wonderful Dandi Dinmont Terrier, Chihuahua's and English Cockers. Our first English Cocker was a beautiful gold girl called "Emma" who we 'rescued' from less than ideal conditions and she gave us many years of great pleasure. It is perhaps 'Emma' who is to blame for our entry into the 'Dog World' as she commenced our passion for this wonderful breed over 20 years ago.

However, I guess I should not put the blame on 'Emma' for my show passion, as my introduction to showing and breeding commenced in Sydney in the 1970's. At that time I bred and campaigned Smoothcoat Chihuahua's under my own Prefix and also campaigned many wonderful dogs from the Tampico and Soltillo Chihuahua Kennels of the day. I recall many a time when we showed under car headlights when shows went late into the night, or the good old drenchings when thunder storms rolled across the show arena. They were heady days for one so young and I can reflect on the joy of bringing home my first blue ribbon and the thrill of winning Best of Breed at the 1973 Royal Easter Show in Sydney with my beautiful Smoothcoat, Aust Ch Tampico Poco Sandy. "Sandy" was from some of the beautiful old English Chihuahua lines of the day and won much respect from the Chihuahua fraternity of the 70's.

Life however takes us all in many directions and, for us, career and study commitments dominated for many years. However, there comes a time when we look for change and in my case old interests were rekindled and with Annie's support we now have an even greater passion. Heartbroken over the death of our beautiful little girl "Buffy" (Citation Belle Star s. Ch Tarawhai Top Spot d. Citation Take A Bow) we went seeking a companion for our old "designer" dog Chloe (half Springer Spaniel half Cocker Spaniel) as we would have to agree with the saying "English Cocker Spaniels Are Like Potato Chips.... You Can Never Just Have One".  So in 2001 the wonderful 'Lani' (Aust Ch Cobalt Infinity) entered our lives. There we have it, 'checking on Lani', Sue Bruno (Kennel COBALT) came knocking at the door and the rest is history. As Annie often quips, "we hung up the golf clubs for Circles and Triangles". So we now breed and show our lovely Cockers and great friendships have been formed with many in the Dog World, here in Australia as well as Overseas.

KENNEL CANDLEWIND has been formed to give us new opportunities and to support and develop our future breeding program as we continue to campaign our young hopefuls. Over the last few years we have faced our own up's and down's, enjoyed our successes and continued to learn from our failures and we now move forward and continue to learn more about this wonderful breed and there hopefully are some exciting times ahead.

We have recently moved to a new property in the beautiful Scenic Rim District of South East Queensland which will enable us to keep a small number of dogs in peaceful and safe surroundings. Our latest move gives us better facilities, more space and hopefully will allow us more time to dedicate to the dogs. Stay Tuned - the pages have just began to be written here at CANDLEWIND - and we hope to have a wonderful story with a happy ending about our own small contribution to the wonderful world of dogs, dog shows and breeding.