ROC​K​ S​OL​ID BIR​​D​ D​​OGS

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About Me

I have always loved dogs! I can remember on my third birthday, my parents pulled up in our driveway and told me to come and see what they had. Curled up on the floor board was a Sheltie puppy. I named him Princer. Since then, I have always had a dog. After Princer, we had Lassie. Lassie was a small black and white dog that looked similar to a Sheltie. She was a stray that we took in. People would ask why we named her Lassie since she was not black and white, nor was she small. I was about seven years old and I would tell them "Well, because she is on our T.V." -- (We only had a small black and white television then.) It was a very sad day when Lassie had to be put down due to a stroke in her old age.

Not too long after we lost Lassie, my cousin tied a "small ball of fur" pup to our porch. They had found him from a litter that was born by the train tracks. He looked like a German Shepard Collie Mix and we named him Tuff. I have two brothers and Lassie was our nursemaid and Tuff was our best friend! He did everything with us. By this time in my age, I was reading a lot. I read every book in our school library and public library on dogs. I had read them multiple times and could tell you what aisle or shelf they would be on. I would always try to train our dogs to do tricks and teach them stuff but my biggest problem was one of my brothers. When I was trying to train them, he would run over and put his arms around them and tell them he was going to save them. But I really wanted Tuff to be a "white fang dog" from the Jack London novel and I taught him to pull a sled in the snow and we would give the neighborhood kids rides. Everyday at three o'clock, Tuff would get up off the porch and head down to our school bus stop and wait us. Then he would greet us and we would walk home together.

We had many other dogs through the years ... Labs, German Shorthaired Pointers, Cocker Spaniels, Brittanys, ect. But, the next dog that stands out the most to me was named Vader. My brothers and I grew up hunting and wanted a hunting dog. And when I was about 11 years old, between the three of us, we had finally saved up enough money to buy a hunting dog. We found a place that had English Springer Spaniel Pups. When we went to look at the eight week old puppies, we noticed a nine month old male pup. We thought the puppies were so cute but decided to get the nine month old because we would be able to hunt him that fall. My dad was shocked that we didn't pick one of the puppies. We didn't know anything about training a hunting dog and Vader would just run around and scare the pheasants up in the air. WE LOVED HIM! He lived to be fifteen years old.

Dogs were my favorite animal and horses were a close second. My Grandpa always had horses, cows, sheep, and pigs. He would pick us up every morning before school to go help him feed. We would spend most of the summer on horseback riding from sunup to sundown. This love, is what led me to my first career. I am a short guy and everyone told me I should be jockey. Through a series of great people that helped me, I became a jockey. I loved being a jockey! I rode mostly in Northern California. It was kind of an obsession for me. During this time that I was riding, I had married my wife and we had our daughter, Lacy, and our son, Cody. I put everything at that time behind my love for winning races, which wasn't great for a wife and kids. We had a little black dog named Mickey that was a Schipperke. Even then, I would come home late from riding and go in the yard and train him. He lived to be nineteen years old!

I had moved to Phoenix to ride because they had the longest racing meet in the country and I hoped that would be easier on the kids. The dieting and vagabond life took its toll on me and I decided to quit riding. I bought a small business and settled into a life here in Arizona. I had more free time and was introduced to quail hunting here. I now had a new obsession! We still had Mickey, but I wanted a hunting dog...my wife did not! At the passing of her grandmother, she flew to Idaho for the funeral. While she was gone, I took my two young kids to look at a nine month old German Shorthaired Pointer named Kelly. I bought her on the spot! My daughter said, "Mom is going to be mad!" What a dog Kelly turned out to be. Around the house, she was a lady but in the field she was a bird-finding machine! My whole line of dogs is based on her. I read articles and The Delmar Smith Method to learn how to train her. She taught me as much as the book! I loved her!

Since then, I have trained, bred, and sold many dogs. I have gotten into the field trial game. I raised my kids and moved where I could build a kennel and have a horse. The self help books say that the happiest people are the people who love what they do for a living. I love to train dogs! That has lead me to become a professional bird dog trainer!