
With healthy parents come healthy puppies.

Part 2 of The Breeder You Become series Watching this great herd of buffalo, with the immense adults moving together and the smaller calves protected among them, I found myself thinking about continuity. Every animal standing there belonged to something larger than itself. The oldest carried experience, the strongest offered protection and the young represented…
A few mornings ago, one of my young Poodles was watching me from across the grooming room with that suspiciously intelligent look Poodles have perfected. She looked as though she understood the entire situation and was simply waiting to see how long it would take the human to catch up. The dryer was running, towels…
“We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.” ~ William Faulkner The older I become, the more I understand that freedom is not something we possess simply because we live in a free country, reject a particular system, or describe ourselves as independent thinkers. Freedom must be practiced, and…
Someone recently posted in a group asking for thoughts on Western versus Eastern holistic medicine. My mind immediately went to conventional Western medicine because that is what most of us understand when we hear the word “Western” used in a healthcare discussion. We think about bloodwork, imaging, pharmaceuticals, surgery, specialists and a diagnosis attached to…
They say everything happens for a reason, and throughout my own journey, I have often found that to be true, although there have been seasons when the reason seemed impossible to find. Some experiences eventually revealed their purpose, while others still leave me wondering what I failed to see, which angle I did not consider,…
Saturday morning I woke up before the alarm and my mind immediately began going through the dogs. Who needed to go outside first, which boys could be out together, what food needed to come out of the freezer, which dog needed grooming and whether the older dog I had checked before bed had rested comfortably…
A dog’s body begins keeping score long before a breeder is willing to admit that something is wrong. That is one of the hardest truths in breeding, especially once we live with more than three or four dogs. At that point, we are no longer simply sharing our home with several beloved pets. We are…
I have learned something about myself: I was never built for a straight, easily explained life. I am intensely curious, stubborn when something matters and rarely satisfied with an answer simply because an authority delivers it confidently. I have never needed my path to make sense to everyone else, but I have always needed it…