My 40 Year Journey to Raising Puppies

I want to share my journey of raising puppies from the beginning. As a child I always loved all animals, especially dogs. My parents got me a beautiful AKC registered Rough Collie when I was around 12 years old. They enrolled me in a 4-H club called Puppy Paws where I would learn to train my collie that I named Co-Co. After only a couple of years Co-Co was diagnosed with heartworm disease. We got Co-Co treated for heartworms and she died from the treatment. This was before there was much understanding of MDR1, which is a genetic condition affecting many herding breeds where they cannot handle certain medications.

After a short grieving time, my parents got me an AKC registered Golden Retriever that I named Nugget. I was about 15 years old at the time. Now, being older, I took training my new puppy very seriously. By the time he was only 5 months old, he was obedience trained and won his obedience and handling classes at our county fair. We took him to a fun show where he also won all of his classes. I loved training and showing him! My parents were not able to help me enroll him in any AKC shows, but I continued to show him at the fair and state fair until I was out of 4-H at the age of 18. At the age of 20 I married the love of my life, Aaron. Nugget stayed with my parents because our small apartment didn’t allow pets. Nugget died of heart problems at age 7.

After a few years Aaron and I were able to purchase our first home. I couldn't stand being without a dog in my life, so the same month that we moved into our new home we bought a gorgeous AKC registered Rough Collie of show quality, we named Sebastian. Two weeks later I gave birth to our first son. I do not know how I thought I would have the time to show Sebastian and raise collie puppies if he turned out as I hoped. Sebastian was a great dog and our son’s best friend but he never became my show dog or fathered any puppies. I didn’t officially obedience train him but he was so easy to train, he practically trained himself. He never had any accidents in the house and he never left our yard. He was just an all around good dog. When Sebastian was only 5 years old, he was in an accident that ultimately took his life.

When we were ready to add another dog to our family we decided to get a Border Collie.  The AKC didn’t recognize the Border Collie as one of their breeds just yet, so this would not be a show dog. I didn’t have time for that anyways now with two small children. With my successes thus far training my dogs, I mistakenly thought I knew what I was doing…WRONG! Heidi the Border Collie came to us from generations after generations of working sheep dogs. We brought her to our little 900 square foot home with a small yard and expected her to fit in just fine. She peed down our registers and ate our walls, she would bark and whine all the time, she would jump on the kids, chew the furniture and destroy anything within her reach! We quickly realized this was not going to work.  Fortunately Aaron’s parents had a large fenced in backyard and agreed to take Heidi. I was devastated, I thought I was good with dogs. Why couldn’t I make this work? That breeder should have never sold Heidi to us in the first place. It was a total mismatch.  Heidi needed to do what she was bred to do, herd sheep, or at the very least be given a job to do to keep her active, both in mind and body.

Our next dog was an AKC registered Shetland Sheepdog named Autumn. I was determined to do things right with her. I couldn’t rely only on my dog training skills that I learned in 4-H as a kid, so I decided to enroll at National K9 School for Dog Trainers and take Autumn with me. I never learned so much in such a short time in all of my life.  It was a three week program, and was about 2 hours away. I still had small children at home, so I was not able to stay in the dorm like everyone else. I would drive the two hours there in the morning after attending to our kids, do the classes all day and drive two hours back home in the evening just to do it all over in the morning. I also had to find time to study a lot of material on my own, because the study groups would meet in the evenings at the dorm while I was driving home. I not only passed all of the courses, I did really well in them and Autumn became awesomely trained. In just three weeks she could do all of her obedience commands off leash and with hand signals. I realized I never really had fully trained dogs before and now I knew exactly why Heidi never worked out.

Now that I was a certified obedience trainer I started offering puppy classes and private lessons to help people train their dogs. I decided to give back to the 4-H dog program and started my own club, named Puppy Paws after my old club that had retired. I really enjoyed teaching kids to train their dogs and eventually my own children would join this club and train their dogs too. I started volunteering at our local animal shelter, working with homeless dogs to help them become more adoptable. Eventually a friend and I started a dog rescue organization to find even more dogs homes.

We decided to add a second dog to our family and got an AKC registered, show quality Belgian Tervuren I named Diamond. I was looking forward to showing him in conformation classes. His breeder suggested I only do matches and fun shows until he matured a bit because their lines were slow to mature. My Sheltie didn’t turn out to be show quality but I did take her to a two day obedience show. The first day she got a qualifying score and second place. The second day she got a qualifying score and first place. It takes three qualifying scores to get a title. We never entered another AKC show with her. By the time Diamond was mature enough to enter conformation shows he developed Thyroid problems and was never show ready. Diamond’s breeder made good on his contract guarantee and gave me another Belgian Tervuren, Hex. Hex was an older puppy and was from faster maturing lines, so she was able to start showing right away.  Our son wanted to train and show her in 4-H, so I wasn’t allowed to show her myself. He did show her in a few UKC/AKC shows but not enough to get a title on her.

By this time in our life, we had adopted a little girl from Kazakhstan and I started homeschooling all three of our kids. With homeschool, dog training, 4-H and raising our family there never seemed to be a good time to raise puppies. Autumn eventually passed away of natural causes and Diamond passed away of a systemic infection. We still had Hex, which our younger son showed in 4-H. Our oldest son wanted a dog of his own to train and show in 4-H, so he got a Border Collie and named him Onyx. We now lived out in the country with acres of land and a large house. I understood the needs of a working (herding) breed and Onyx worked out just fine in our family. Our son grew up and got married and Onyx stayed with us.

We moved to another home out in the country with some land. Onyx and Hex came with us. Hex died of natural causes shortly after the move. Our youngest son got married and moved away too. So it was just us, our daughter and Onyx, the old Border Collie. This is when we decided it might be the right time to finally raise puppies. We researched breeds and decided on the Miniature American Shepherd. After much searching we finally found our first MAS, Jade. About a year later we added a male MAS, Sardius to our family. When they were old enough we finally bred our first litter! So it took me about 40 years from when I knew that I wanted to breed dogs and raise puppies until it finally came to be, what a journey!