My name is Sharon, I have been married to Paul for 20 years and we have 4 lovely children, 3 daughters Abigail 19, Kirstie 16, Paige 14 and 1 son Kieran 12.  I have always lived in Bristol, in fact I lived at my mums house from 2 years of age until I moved out at 24, Paul and I have lived in this house now for nearly 21 years.

At the age of 9 after years of poor health, I was diagnosed with diabetes, something my dad found hard to come to terms with.  I spent 6 long weeks in the Bristol Childrens Hospital, then I was sent home to cope with this which I will have for the rest of my life.  I currently have two injections a day, but to me it's not an illness, just a way of life.  I've had 4 pregnancies, yes all under very close supervision of the hospital and clinic/mid wife, with each pregnancy my insulin intake went up 4 fold, which meant I had to have 5 injections a day and 2 weekly hospital appointments.  Abigail was born at 37 weeks weighing in at 7lb 10oz, Kirstie was born at 35 weeks weighing in at 8lb 12oz, Paige was born by emergency c-section 9 weeks early weighing in at 4lb 10oz.........Kieran was the only one I carried full term and he was a whopping 10lbs 5oz.  Paige was the only one that had problems, and spent 5 weeks in the special care baby unit.  She suffered bleeds into her brain, had problems breathing, infact when she was born she had no heart beat, the first time I saw her all I can remember was all the tubes and these two finger print bruises on her chest where they had given her heart massage to get her heart beating again.  Paige came home from SCBU 5 weeks later at 5lbs in weight after dropping to 3lb 10oz, we really haven't looked back since.  She's now 13, 5' 8" tall......a good 6" taller than me, she's a very bright and clever girl, you would never guess - well except all the scarring on the back of her hands from the drips - that she had been a prem baby!

Paul and I started seeing each other just after we left secondary school, I was friends with his sister Sally and things just progressed from there!  I always said I didn't want to get married or have children, but somehow things changed.  I gave Paul 5 weeks notice that I had booked the wedding at the Registry office, giving only very close members of our family invites.  But it was the wedding I wanted and the next day we flew out to Ibiza, my first time abroad...........and as it was our honeymoon decided to take 13 members of our family along too!!  Actually it was all paid for by my dad who had just retired from work, originally it was just a holiday, but we managed to change it into our honeymoon.

We live in our 3 bedroom semi-detached house, next to woodland, so we only have neighbours on one side of us.  We have a big back garden which is great for our dogs.

As a child we had a pet poodle called Pepe, Pepe was a lovely dog but a bit temperamental,  unfortunately Pepe bit me quite badly and all trust was lost in him.  We didn't have him rehomed or destroyed he stayed with us till he died.  Obviously this didn't put me off dogs because that brings me to the next chapter in my life, my lovely 4 legged babies!

We decided 9 years ago that a cocker spaniel would be a lovely addition to our family, the children were fine with dogs and as they were getting older, no longer babies, decided now was the right time especially as I don't work.  We searched for many months, looking into the breed etc. health issues and decided we would like an orange roan cocker spaniel.  Little did we know that orange roans are pretty hard to come by and we would probably have to be put onto a breeders list and wait for a pup, which could be a while.

We contacted a lovely lady in Yeovil, Chrystine Rose, who had a litter of blue and orange roan pups, unfortunately all the orange roans were spoken for and she was keeping one for herself.  She did have a blue roan available, so we decided we would go and see the litter anyway.  A couple of days before we were due to visit, Chrystine called to say the family that wanted one of the orange girls had backed out and there was one available, she wasn't sure which one as she hadn't decided which one she was going to keep.  We really didn't mind and drove to Yeovil.  Both orange girls were beautiful, although I had fallen hook line and sinker for one in particular, but we had to wait.  The weeks past and Chrystine called to say she had decided to keep the other orange roan girl, so the little girl we had set our hearts on was ours......this was our Rosie - Vilros Princess Daisy.

Rosie has been a wonderful girl, gentle, loving and just loves lots of fuss and attention, so much so that we decided we would like Rosie to have a litter so we could keep one of her babies.  At the age of 2 and after having the KC/BVA eye test done, we took Rosie to stud to a lovely lady called Wendy Cullen in Taunton.  We used her boy called Bertie, a wonderful blue roan!

Rosie had a fantastic litter of 7 babies, one of which we kept, our darling Daisy!  This was just the start of my love of my dogs, since then Daisy has had a few litters, one from which we kept our Poppy, Poppy has had one litter in 2005 from which we kept our Inca.  Also in 2004 Rosie had her third and final litter and she did us proud, she was mated to another of Wendy's boys called Andre, from this litter we kept our very beautiful Lily.  We also went out and bought a new line, our Jasmine and Jasmine has had two litters one of which we kept our Bella, Bella's dad is the very handsome Ringo, Quintavia Show Stopper, he is owned by Tracey Herd.

So we now have 9 beautiful cockers:  Rosie (orange roan) aged 8.1/2 years, Daisy (orange roan) aged 6.1/2 years, Poppy (blue roan) aged 4.1/2 years, Jasmine (orange roan) 4.1/2 years, Lily (black & white) nearly 3 years and our darling little Bella (blue roan) aged 20 months, Petal (black & white) 8 months and last but not least Flora (orange roan)  4 months.  I really must stop now or Paul and the children may just move out!  Although we do have exciting plans for 2008, so watch this space.....