AboutMe

Hello, my name is Diane Haskell. Thank you for visiting my Westie website. There is lots of information about the dogs and our facilities around this site but I thought I would tell you a bit about me. As you can probably tell looking around the site, taking photos and building websites are two of my hobbies.

I have been married to Randy since 1986 and we have two sons and a daughter ranging in age from nine to sixteen. We have a cattle farm but my husband has taken a part-time job driving a truck for an oilfield company to supplement the farm income.

People ask about my accent and wonder where I am from. My mother was Scottish, my father English/Irish and I was mostly raised in Wales before immigrating to Canada – so my accent is a bit of a mix. I was born in Wallasey which is the opposite side of the Mersey River from Liverpool in the United Kingdom; if you're old enough to remember the song by Gerry & The Pacemakers, "Ferry 'cross the Mersey" that is where you would have ended up had you took the sung about ferry. The Nisbet tartan shown on the website is from my mother's side of the family. Our family motto is "I Byde It" which means I stand by it. I like to think that I am continuing this family pledge with the lifetime bring back option I give with all my dogs sold.

My volunteer activities include working on the library board where I am the vice-chair; I am a Municipal Liason with the National Novel Writing Month, my job is to encourage rural Albertans to participate in this mind-stretching, typing-fingers-abusing activity.I run a monthly chess club during the winter months. I orgonised the Amnesty International letter writing campaign for human rights in our town this past December and plan to do it again this December 10th.

I occasionally coach a soccer team in our town's fun league. My children are involved in a lot of activities so that keeps me hopping, both in driving and doing volunteer activites for the clubs.

We are a home schooling family but my oldest attends public high school. I do the bookwork for our farm and am the general farm “go-for”. My Mondays to Fridays are pretty full and structured.

One of my favourite things to do is to host tea and book parties for my friends and neighbours – I set out my Mum’s good china that we brought with us from Wales and set the table with a book at everyone’s place setting. I love sitting around for a good long chat every now and again.

The picture on the left shows one that had a herb theme. I buy books to give to my friends at these parties very reasonably from the same place I buy the dog books.

We have five spayed/neutered dogs including a Beagle and a Yellow Lab- we love dogs in general - we don't only keep dogs that will pay for themselves with puppy sales. Our dogs range in age from our puppy Ruby up to Brinkly who is nine. Last fall, our dear, almost 16-year-old, Black Lab Ben died of old age.

You can read about my evolving breeding philosophy by clicking here.

Thank you for taking time out to have this cyber visit with me,

Diane

Have you ever thought about having your own website? I highly recommend Homestead because they have software that is easy to use, a wide range of features and they quickly answer questions if you get stuck or have a problem. I have been using them since shortly after I got my first computer in 2000 so that is eight years for me (on my third computer now) and I only have had positive experiences and ever increasing improvements offered by them. If you join up through my link I get a commission :-)

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