"The Adventures of Bella and Fiona"

Bella and Fiona are full blooded Border Collie puppies. They were born on July 4, 2009 in Modesto, California and given up for adoption to the Stanislaus County Animal Shelter.

Sarah and I made the difficult decision to put our beloved companion Sydney whom we raised and loved for the past fourteen years to sleep in May of this year (2009). A special thanks and mention goes out to the Mono Way Veterinary Hospital in Sonora, California for the care and compassion shown Sydney while facilitating his death as they did his life .... with dignity and professionalism.

Sydney was an Austalian Cattle dog mix also rescued from a shelter in Monterey County, California so many years ago.

We thought for some unknown reason that we could live "dogless" for awhile - that lasted five months when we realized that despite how full and seemingly complete our lives are, the space in our world vacated by Sydney left a void that we felt painfully on a daily basis ...

Little did we know.

While our intention was not to replace Sydney's personality (an impossible task), we decided to give another dog a chance at life it might never have .. when we saw these two little princesses at the animal shelter, we knew we had to adopt both so these littermates could share their lives and ours together.

Border Collies are highly intelligent and believed by many to be "the world's smartest breed of dog". Border Collies also only have two speeds - Sleeping and 80 miles per hour... (in between they learn foreign languages, table manners, calculus and logarithims, study American history and eat volumns of food to maintain energy levels.)

Members of the "herding class" of dogs, Border Collies are difficult at best for those without suffient time and space to devote to them.

We have included on this blog some links to Border Collie web pages for you to check our before you decide to rescue or purchase one of these magnificent animals.

Bella and Fiona will post here throughout their lives as time permits - we hope in this way to inform the gentle reader about Border Collies and in some small way allow our "girls" to return some of that in bred intellegence to all of us..

Please enjoy and should you have any questions about Bella and Fiona, or Border Collies in general, please drop us an email.

Be well -

Dave and Sarah
stefanies_dad@yahoo.com - stefanies_mom@yahoo.com