About Us
We are from Rigby, Idaho and have been raising labs since 1998. This is just a side business and not one that we actually make a living with. Kirk is employed in a printing business and I teach piano lessons for my living. We have 4 children who are all raised and out of our home and we are now enjoying the grandkids as well. Our first lab was Sadie and it turned out she had bad hips so she was retired from the program and went to live with a good friend. That is when we got serious about learning the responsibilities that go along with breeding dogs. We did some research and learned about the OFA as well as other organizations, health clearances, pedigrees and just what it takes to be a responsible dog breeder. After searching the ads we found our first female in our breeding program, "Brooklyn of Cottonhollow" who came from a kennel in North Carolina. Kirk trained Brookie for hunting using the method of Richard Wolters in his book "Game Dog". Brookie turned out to be a phenomenal hunter as well as a superb family dog. She has been a total joy both in the field as well as in our home and very much a part of our family. Brookie produced several litters of pups that were placed all over the country. One such pup is owned and trained by a member of the Salt Lake City Fire Department and has had extensive training in Search and Rescue as well as the FEMA program. Brookie retired from her maternity duties in 2007 and enjoys her advancing years in front of our fireplace or out on her favorite chair on the front porch.
Our next gal, "Madysen Cash Force" came to us from a kennel in Wisconsin. Maddy was a big gal, about 80 lbs and a real beauty. She too was a member of our family and the grandkids favorite. She produced some wonderful hunting and companion dogs. Probably the most notable is Tater who has his GHRCH title and lives in Texas with Steve & Maria Jefferies. Many of her pups are much like her, a truly sweet big brown dog with a sweet personality. Maddy was known as the clown of our doggy family and loved to chase flashlight beams, bird and butterfly shadows. Maddy passed away at the age of 12 on October 29, 2011. She will be forever loved and remembered by everyone who knew her. You can read a tribute to Maddy here.
Yellowstone Nitro's Li's Jo was the first yellow lab we acquired. She was out of "Nitro" and a daughter of NAFC Cotton Pick'n Cropper. She too is a phenomenal hunter and was trained by Kirk. An amazing athlete, Jo loves to train and play. We have yet to wear Jo out as she just wants to go, go, go. She has a lot of energy but is attentive and obedient in the field. She is also a character with her own fun personality. She is famous for jumping through open windows of cars, vans and trucks that pull into our driveway. She has produced some outstanding pups and we love hearing from the families that these pups have gone to. We hear over and over how easy her pups are to train and how smart they are. Check out some of these pups on our Brags link. Because of the success and ease of training of Jo's pups we decided to keep a pup from her final litter. Jo is now retired from our breeding program.
Crème Soda was born February 2, 2011 to Jo and Seaside Casey Jones MH, a son of NFC Dewey's Drake of Moon Rivers. Click on her link on the left to read more about Soda as well as Dakota.
We got into this business by thinking we'd have perhaps a litter or two and then be done but I fell in love with the whole process. I love the whelping and raising the litter, meeting people from all over the country who buy our puppies and receiving emails from time to time from many of our happy puppy families. Kirk enjoys training and hunting with the dogs and helps out a lot with the puppies as well. At one point early on I thought that maybe we ought to have 6 or 7 dogs so that we could have a litter or two available all the time but after producing the first couple of litters I could see that to do this properly, quality is way more important than quantity. It takes a great deal of time to properly socialize and raise a litter of puppies and to do what it takes to place them in really good homes. We don't sell pups to puppy mills. Most of our pups go to great pet homes but we make sure the breeding and health clearances qualify them to be trained for hunting, hunt testing or field trialing and to be able to be used in a breeding program if that is the desire. We sell our pups with full registration but also spend time educating our buyers as to the importance of responsible breeding if they choose to do so. Most of our pups do end up spayed or neutered. Our puppies are born in our home and handled a lot right from the beginning. Our socializing includes the beginnings of crate conditioning so that the pup feels safe in a crate the day it leaves for its new home. Pups are vet checked and certified healthy before leaving. If any health problem arises while the pup is here it is brought to the attention of the potential buyer and the opportunity to back out and receive a full refund of any payments received is made available or a reduction of price is offered as well. We offer a 26 month health guarantee and we honor it when the situation arises. In the past 13 years and well over 150 puppies produced we have had to replace or offer a partial refund on only 3 puppies so we feel very good about the success rate of our breeding program. No matter how careful you are in choosing only the best stock for breeding, occasionally a problem occurs and it should be satisfying to know that you have a breeder who doesn't just offer a guarantee but also backs it up. Don't purchase a pup without knowing the background of both the breeding stock and the breeder. We have also helped to "rehome" several of our pups when it just didn't work out for the original buyer. We try very hard to make sure the pups are placed in the very best situations for all involved. We have many references you can contact before committing to purchasing one of our pups. Just ask and we can give you email addresses or phone numbers of previous buyers.
