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 recently retired from his career and is thrilled to have more time to devote to the dogs and their training. 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 season of life. Our first lab was Sadie. 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". Brookie was an awesome dog to learn with and from. She produced many outstanding pups. You can read more about her on our "Retired Momma's" page.

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 most of 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. Since 1998 and well over 350 puppies produced, we have had to replace or offer a partial refund on only 5 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. 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.