Blog

Hi and thanks for visiting my website.

I’m Lisa Soar and I will be updating this blog regularly throughout the hectic sheepdog trials season. 

Everyone who is anyone has a blog these days, so I thought I’d better join the flock on www.k9tales.co.uk ¬ a new site aimed at bringing you all the latest news from the world of sheepdogs. 

As an introduction here’s a little bit about me…

I have been involved with dogs all my life. From a young age weekends were spent travelling to championship dog shows with my nan, where I’d wander around the show rings fascinated by the diversity of dog breeds. 

As a teenager I competed in obedience and agility classes with my border collie cross old English sheepdog bitch Poppy. We achieved a place in the Welsh team at Crufts in the KCJO’s obedience competition and travelled the country to competitions. 

My interest in sheepdog trials began thanks to my mum. She’d had a small flock of Kerry Hill sheep for a couple of years but we didn’t have a working dog. On numerous occasions they had run us ragged as we’d tried to get them in and out of fields, so mum bought a border collie puppy to train in 1995 - realising a lifelong ambition to work a sheepdog. 

Flint became her first trials dog and consequently I became hooked. 

With university and starting out in my journalism career it wasn’t until 2001 that I bought my first sheepdog pup, Corrie, hoping she’d turn out to be good enough to compete at trials. 

Fortunately she did, but we hit a major hurdle when she was diagnosed with canine lymphoma at the age of four (read Corrie’s story in the k9tales features section).  

It was a heartbreaking time when the odds were stacked against her and she underwent an intense course of chemotherapy. She finished her treatment at the start of 2007 and has been in remission since. She has regular blood tests to check for any abnormal cells and I’m still firmly keeping my fingers crossed.

After the long winter months when all is pretty quiet on the Welsh trials scene, I’m looking forward to getting out and about again.

Hopefully I will get to know many of you, if I don’t know you already. 

If you have any suggestions for stories, or would like to see anything in this blog or on the k9tales site contact us.