Hi and welcome to our rough collie web page! We are a small hobby kennel in the North East of England based on the borders of Cumbria, Durham and Northumberland. We have lived here for almost 10 years with our cats and dogs, and have a beautiful one bed roomed dog friendly holiday letting cottage attached to our home, most suited to people who like to be around dogs!

My passion for rough collies started in my childhood as I was brought up with rough collies, Bruce is a spaniel man and to keep him happy we have an adorable but lively working type spaniel called  Fifi.

I started showing and breeding back in 1994 and was quickly surrounded by lots of rough collies. For some years I had the right facilities to look after a lot of dogs and worked for rough collie rescue.

I applied for the Alanita affix in 1995 which was the combination of my first name and my first husbands first name. Several years ago we did try to change it but nothing we submitted to the Kennel club was approved so we decided to stick with Alanita ….even though my current husband is called Bruce!

We do enjoy showing the dogs and meeting up with our friends from around the country and of course its nice to win….. and we have been lucky enough to have done some winning over the years, but to us it is more important to enjoy the dogs and be surrounded by animals we like, therefore we rarely part with a dog once it has reached maturity, because frankly they are part of our family by that point. We will only find another home for a dog if they are unhappy living with us in a multi dog environment.

We do not part with our dogs to make room for new hopefuls and we are proud to say our oldies stay with us until the end.We do breed from time to time and we are inspected and passed as assured breeders.

The inspection went well although I think the inspector was a little bemused when he asked to see where the dogs were housed and we showed him the living room, dining room, kitchen, large grooming area and then two 2 pristine large lined and heated kennels which were clearly not used often!! I explained the dogs preferred the sofa and the arm chairs!

By being an assured breeder it means we also agree to health screen our dogs for eye disease and hip dysplasia. We also eye test our puppies before they go to their new homes. In the near future we will also have genetically tested any eye clear dogs we own and will know the MDR-1 drug sensitivity status for all our dogs.  

We hope you enjoy looking at our website and seeing our dogs. If you would like to visit and meet us and the dogs please give us a ring first but we are always pleased to see people. The holiday cottage is available for weekends and longer holiday breaks throughout the year.