It all started with dog hair.  Yes, dog hair!   Over the years we have had a variety of dogs, generally large, often more than one at a time.  During the ‘80’s  we discovered Briards, a French shepherd dog.  Briards have an interesting history dating back to the time of Charlemagne (768 AD).  It is reported that Thomas Jefferson brought the Briard to the USA when he returned from France.  Briards are a long haired breed, advertised as a heart wrapped in fur.  It is  also advertised that they don’t shed. 

    Briards, Gandy and Thal

Our response to that was “Yeah, Sure. ”  At least Ron never got in trouble for having long blond hairs on his shoulder  (Sharon is a brunette) - he could always claim they belonged to the dog.   We had two Briards when we moved from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to the Lansing area,  so we looked for house with a little bit of land around it.  We found it in Bath, Michigan;  about 3 1/2 acres with a good sized pond.

Now that we had a pond, it seemed only natural we should get a dog that enjoyed swimming, so we acquired Frodo , a Newfoundland puppy.    We found out it’s all relative;  Briards don’t shed - Newfs shed, and Shed and SHED!  We had black fuzz everywhere.  Ever the practical one, Sharon figured there should be some way to make use of all that dog hair.  So she picked up a book on spinning dog hair, made drop spindle and started spinning.

Our daughter, Alisa, is a weaver,  so the topic of  the  “dog” yarn and wool came up in many of our phone discussions. She mentioned that she had seen some of the ancestral  breeds of sheep and they were “neat”.  She and her husband, Brian,  would like to have a farm some day with specialty wool animals.  Ron thought they were kind of interesting and said he wouldn’t mind having a couple too.  Alisa told him that he really should get vicunas because their wool was really soft  and very valuable.  However, it is not legal to own  a vicuna, so alpacas were the next best thing.  In July 1997, while we were visiting Alisa in NJ, we saw  an ad  for an alpaca for sale.  It wasn’t very far away so we drove over to take our first look at alpacas.

It was love at first sight!   We came back to Michigan, checked out alpacas on the internet and started reading every thing we could find.  We then paid a visit to Gromek’s Farms in Yale, Michigan.  Dan Gromek spent several hours showing us animals and  answering our questions.  We came home the proud owners of a beautiful, snow white weanling named Milady  , and a gray clown named Master Dolan to keep her company.  Then the fun began, between July 20th and September 1st  we  went on a 10 day vacation (already planned before we had ever thought of alpacas), put up a barn, and put in 400  feet of fence (with Brian’s help).   Labor day weekend we picked up our animals and Aurora Alpacas was  born.

We had been bitten by the alpaca bug and have a bad case of Alpaca fever.  Be careful  it is VERY contagious.  Alisa,  Brian and their two sons, Alex ( 7), and Kevin ( 2)   are infected with it.  Our son, Ron Jr.,  his wife, Liana and their son, Robin (4 ) caught it.   If only they didn’t live in NJ and near Chicago.    In October, we took the two animals  to the Michigan Alpaca Fest  - and came home with three,  all in the back of the Silhouette van.   Montague is a beautiful dark chestnut color.  He is Alex's animal     .  
 Even the dogs like the alpacas(Kelsey and Milady).

Alpacas are the perfect animal -gentle, intelligent, clean, all that lovely wool you don’t have to  brush, and they DON’T shed.

Oh, and by the way,  Sharon did get enough yarn made to knit a ‘dog wool” vest.  

 

Update:
In  January,  Sharon came home from work and announced that we needed to get a pregnant alpaca because Milady couldn't deliver a cria  until late 1999.    So we went looking for a pregnant female, came home with two, we picked out a fawn named Juliet, and  I just couldn't pass up an all black female named Elvira.   We now have five alpacas  and are anxiously waiting for our first cria.  Wonder if Sharon’s  boss will give her maternity leave?