Bellaclan Border Collies was established in 1998 in the little city of Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, by myself (Laura), along with support and dedication from my parents, Gordon and Maria Shaw.  Our lives revolved entirely around our show dogs, where we jointly cared for, trained, bred, conditioned and loved them there until 2019.

In 2019, due to job changes, I moved myself and the kennel to Southern Ontario, where I continued to show and campaign our Bellaclan dogs on the most competitive circuits in Canada. In 2021, I relocated with my Husband, Jonathan, to Maryland, USA (45 minutes from Washington, DC), where we now reside with our son, Derek. It’s been a big change coming from Thunder Bay, where 5-10 feet of snow at one time is normal! *VBG*

My Father, whose parents are Irish, Scottish, English and Swiss, grew up working Border Collies, as did many generations prior. You could say I was practically born into Border Collies.  As a toddler, I heard story upon story about my father's Border Collies, mainly about his Border Collie named "Sport."  On my Birthday every year, I begged for a Border Collie, and FINALLY, they surrendered. I shouldn't say "they."...specifically, my Father did (without telling my Mother); we'll save that story for another day, though!. *LOL*

Our original start came from Canadian working lines bred to work cattle, eventually moving on to herding lines who worked sheep. Sadly, we had countless dogs with hip dysplasia from these lines; thus, after fifteen years in the breed and only two litters, we chose to spay/neuter these dogs and search the globe for new foundation lines.

Our search led us to Australia; the breed was developed the most and arguably made famous there! We fell in love with these dogs, so we imported Australian lines from the USA to Canada to start! Felicity entered our lives in 2004, followed by Parker in 2007.  We followed this by importing a bitch from the UK and found that the UK and Australian line combination produced the type of Border Collie we strive for!  Today, we will go to the ends of the earth to bring in the best lines we can. If we genuinely feel that there is no better stud for one of our girls or a better dog to add to the program than one on the other side of the globe, that’s just what we’ll have to do. We will go to the ends of the earth to preserve quality rather than sacrifice our lines and the hard work of all the Breeders before us.

To date, we have bred/co-bred over fifty champions under the 'Bellaclan' prefix. You can meet all the Champion and titled dogs we have produced on this PAGE. 

I am sure I have forgotten dozens of titles, so if you have a dog from us with missing or new titles, please send them!  

Warmest,  

Laura & Jonathan Wright