Molly is a beagle and she was born on 28th April 2002. We discovered her quite by chance when looking through the adverts in the local newspaper. It is pretty unusual to see adverts for beagle pups and when we did, it seemed the right thing to do to call up and see if there were any left.

It turned out she was one of 9 pups, 4 dogs and 5 bitches that had been born on a farm belonging to a man who breeds various animals out near Farnham. There were only 3 bitches left when we went to see them, and the owner brought them down for us to see in wheelbarrow! Molly was the most inquisitive of the pups, standing proudly on the rim of the wheelbarrow so she could see out. And that was it... she was the one we wanted. We put down a deposit that night, then came back at the weekend to pick her up.

Jake is a boxer and was born on 4th June 2002. He is 4 weeks younger than Molly and we found him through The Kennel Club. His owner is a nice lady who herself runs a pet supply business in Cookham Dean. Her boxer bitch, Jackie, had had 9 pups (her first litter), of which 2 unfortunately died at birth. Of the 7 remaining, 4 were dogs and 3 were bitches.

We first saw Jake at 4 weeks' old, at which point all the pups were really tiny and very cute. He was the last boy available (all the other boys were already spoken for!), and a little smaller than the other males. However this was not a problem as he was just as adorable! We chose him on the spot, and came back to see him at 6 weeks (in which time he had grown a great deal!) then picked him up at 8 weeks.

Tilly is also a boxer and was born on 20th March 2006. She came to us somewhat unexpectedly whilst visiting Larkhill Tipis one weekend at the end of May 06. We had ruled out getting another dog on all occasions in the past, reckoning that 2 were (ARE!) quite enough, even though since seeing Jake's uncle Polo (a white boxer) when we got him it had always been in the back of our minds. On a wet Saturday in West Wales, we happened to stop at a supermarket to get food for the evening's meal and up on the noticeboard was an advert for a red boy boxer and a white bitch. Not doing anything on the spot, we drove away but then drive back to get the number and phone the owner. There were other factors, but it all fell into place and so came Tilly-Bach (to give her her fullname) into our lives.