We had been very active for many year in showing our Britannia Petites, Holland Lops and Lionheads, until a house fire on March 19, 2004 forever changed or lives. All of the adult rabbits we owned perished that night. We have been busy slowly worked on rebuilding our herd, taking care to maintain the quality we always have taken great pride in.

The fire cause a horrible lose in our love but it also was a great lose to the Lionhead breed.
That night we lost our beloved Wooly Bear. This Lionhead doe impacted our herd and so
much of the Lionhead breed throughout the United States. She and the other lovely Lionheads we lost will be missed very much.

In April 2005 we won Best of Breed at the Lionhead National Show in a showing of over 300 Lionheads! Finally we feel the Lionhead section of our herd is back to close to what it was before the fire.

We have also been busy showing our Lionheads and have been having loads of fun! We have added a number of BOB and BOS wins at local shows. Including a nice win of BOB and BOS in a large entry at Superior WI under Tex Thomas. Many of our wins are coming out of the senior classes, a goal we have been working on with our Lionheads for
some time now. Here is a link if you would like to see pictures and show records of the
Lionheads we have been currently winning with.

We have produced Best In Show Winners in many of the breeds we have shown over the years, including Satins, Jersey Woolys, Holland Lops, Polish and in our beloved Britannia Petites. Our Britannia herd was all registered and 90% were Grand Champions. We had great success showing and breeding them. We did attempt to rebuild our Britannia herd, but as temperament is so important to us have decided at this time we do not have the resources to give to that project. The Lionheads currently require a great deal of time because of preparing for either presentation in new colors or breed presentation if Arden should fail for some reason. Hopefully some day in the future we will have Britannias again.

As all our friends know, Sarrah has always loved the "fallen ear" look. She just needs to
have those lop ears around! Since she is not found of Tortoise rebuilding her Lop herd in
the lovely colors she favors is a challenge. We were lucky to secure some of our old
Chocolate bloodline and she has been working hard on that color. She has also decided
to include some of the new Otters in our Holland gene pool. With great pride she finished
her first Grand Champion and in BLUE OTTER doe! The 2006 show season was very
successful for her with the addiction of 2 Grand Champion bucks and a number of very nice
leg wins on others. Sarrah and her friends Jennifer and Matthew Laganier are now breeding Lops in a co-op rabbitry named DragonBreath.

In addition to the Holland Lops, Sarrah has decided that our collection needed to be expanded to include the new breed - Velveteen Lops. She and Arden Wetzel have decided to breed together for the next few years until they have established a strong herd. They are determined to tackle this breed and produce quality show animals.

Since returning form Indy we have a nice breeding group and the first babies have arrived. In my opinion this breed has not reached the same point as the Lionhead breed. Type, head and ears still need to be perfected. As always we are up for a challenge and feel this will be fun. We have created a Velveteen Lop website to help breeders and anyone interested to find each other and share ideas and information.

In all the breeds we raise, we believe in loads of human contact. We try and spend a great deal
of time with our rabbits, so we are very aware of temperament. Our rabbits have exposed to
dogs, cats, small children as well as TV and radio noise. We select for calm temperaments,
does that are relaxed and friendly and who foster easily. We feel temperament is often overlooked in everyone's desire to produce show animals. A beautiful rabbit is wonderful but if you can not handle it without taking care not to be bite, for us there is little joy in having it around. We breed strongly for temperament and we cull for temperament just as strongly as we cull for type.
We take pride in the quality of ALL rabbits we raise and show.

Our rabbitry is a true "family project", now that Abby has joined her Mom - Sarrah and her Grandma - Gail in showing rabbits. In May
2005 Abby and her Lionhead Cindy brought home Abby's first
Lionhead trophy to begin filling Abby's trophy shelf.

We all enjoy showing rabbits and travel to a number of shows in and around Minnesota and Wisconsin. Plus we try and attend ARBA Nationals as well as National Shows whenever we can.

Our family at Cimmaron suffered a great lost in February of 2006 when our Red Doberman named
Uriel passed from tragic sickness related to liver issues. Uriel had came to live with us when she
was ten weeks old to take on the mantel of guardian to the family and property, a job that was left vacant when Gail's beloved Dalmatian companion Michael passed on. Uriel was a wonderful replacement as a guardian she was also a dear friend and will be solely missed. Abby said the
first night after Uriel's passing "Grandma, I know she was only half my dog but it hurts like
she was all mine" . Our sadness is summed up in that sentence.

Even in times of deepest darkness God is good and opens a door.

Since Gail and Abby knew that they could not bear to live without a large dog a casual
glance at the paper led us to a breeders of Dobermans who use a human immersion method
of raising puppies, that we have used in the past here when we raised dogs. So we have
added a new Doberman to the family. This will be fun for Abby who has never had a puppy in
the house. Grandma Gail is not as sure about the "fun" aspect.

The new puppy is a Blue Doberman and is also called Uriel, but this girl is Uriel Too or U2 for
short. U2 has some big paw prints to fill but she is off in the right direction.

Uriel and Abby went off to "puppy school" learning all about how to be good friends to each other and graduated getting
to wear a cap and all. Abby was very proud!

Uriel Too has grow like a weed and has now become a lovely little lady with a shimmering coat and more energy then
Gail knows what to do with some days! She loves balls and empty plastic drink bottles. (Her favorite toy. She will even take gallon milk jugs if she can) She also loves to steal the plastic play balls out an open bunny cage. She is very careful and will play with them for hours till her powerful Doberman teeth finally crack it in half.

Uriel has started to take seriously her task of Guardian making us all feel more secure. She is gentle with the bunnies and is turning into a wonderful family dog.

Our family also includes a little black Pekinese, named Tia, who has become the joy of Sarrah's life. Tia joined us after the lost of our other older Dalmatian friend Ralph, who
passed in 2004 at 12 years old. Tia is best friends with RosePetal, the cat, and was a constant chum for our Red Dobe, Uriel. Uriel at 95 pounds could have Tia as lunch but
was a gentle and tolerate friend. This led Tia to believe she is also 95 pounds! and able
to do anything a much larger dog can do. Tia is not as found of Uriel Too who seems to
have way to much energy for Tia.

We also share our home with RosePetal, Abby's cat. RosePetal is a boy, but five year old girls choose names that are truly NOT gender based. RosePetal is the fulfillment of a promise Grandma made to Abby that she could have a new kitten when we moved back home. Abby had lost her beloved Bengal Cat in the fire. Since Abby is a great Harry Potter fan she had decided she had to have a "ginger cat". Everyone knows Crookshanks in the Harry Potter books is a "ginger cat" - "a most intelligent animal."

RosePetal has turned out to be a friendly, human loving soul who is most happy hanging out with the family. He often behaves as a dog and was the first one of the three pets to learn to "sit up pretty" and beg for treats on command. (This has caused some concern for Gail who thinks it is embarrassing for her Doberman to be beaten out by a CAT!)

The chaos has reached new levels with the addition of a new litter of puppies! Sarrah
decided that it was time for Tia to have children and after a meeting with a lovely little
golden Pekingese boy while were we in Columbus we were blessed with two active little balls of
fluff. Running and playing up and down the hard wood hall, tug-a-war games in the family
room, tumbling play fighting have now realy filled our days with activity. Uriel is thrilled with
new kids in the house. RosePetal is not so excited about them. Abby simply is in love with
them and Grandma gets to housebreak them!

Evenings are still our favorite time of all! Abby and Uriel snuggle close with Grandma,
one on each side. RosePetal always close by. Tia can be found sitting on Chuck's lap
watching the evening news or curled in her basket while Sarrah works on the computer.
The new puppies - Buddy and Jena finaly snuggled to sleep after a day of busy puppy things.

In all things we have learned that life is fragile and so we try to enjoy every minute! There is so much joy is the simple things
- watching Abby growing up. It seems like only last night I was reading her bedtime stories and now she loves to read to me.
- watching new baby rabbits exploring the cage for the first time out of the nestbox.
- The satisfaction of hearing a baby born here has won a BOB for someone and how happy they are.
- now laughing at the antics of puppies whose leaps often result in belly flops but whose warm puppy kisses make all the stress of a long day disappear.

We enjoy our rabbits and this hobby very much.
Hopefully you will find us friendly and willing to help.