A Brief History

 As a child, I preferred stuffed animals to dolls. We had two cocker spaniels as pets and I loved them. My first Labrador was a one-year-old black male named Amos of mixed American and British stock. I acquired him in 1976 at no charge from an ad in the newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio, where I was in my second year of medical school and on a shoestring budget. My then mother-in-law volunteered to foot the dog food bill as we were living in a dangerous part of Cleveland and our rental house on campus had been broken into in the middle of the day. She agreed that we needed a big dog although all I really cared about was living with a nice Labrador retriever.

In 1983, during my last year of a five-year general surgical residency and when I purchased my first house, I purchased a beautiful chocolate girl named Molly out of Am/Can CH Puhs Superman. He was the first chocolate Labrador to win at a national specialty. Soon thereafter along came another beautiful chocolate girl named Chaos out of Hampshire's Witchcraft and Lillimar’s power of Love, whom we purchased from Mel Pfeiffle. In 1987, Chaos had her first litter and my desire to breed Labradors became reality. Chaos and Molly got me through a very difficult time in my life.

Soon thereafter I had the great fortune of having Gladys Rogers of Snowden Hills Labradors take me under her wing. She has been an outstanding mentor and friend. In 1993 she placed 6 of her Snowden Hills champion bitches with me and our present day Labradors mostly go back to her girls. I quickly moved from 0.3 acres in the middle of Burlington, Vermont, to 25 acres in Stowe and built a barn with a radiant heated floor. Our brood bitches usually have only two litters in their lifetime. Puppies are born in the house and I stay with the litter 24/7 for the first 4 days after birth. Puppies are raised in the house through 6 weeks of age at which time they move to the kennel. The kennel has a warm radiant heated floor and classical music is playing in the kennel most of the time (interspersed with short bursts of rock and roll during the day - David’s influence). In our kennel setting, the puppies learn very quickly to relieve themselves outdoors as they have free access to go inside or outside at all times.

We send our Labradors out with handlers to be shown periodically and we have been competitive at the yearly Labrador Retriever Club of the Potomac (LRCP) show in Maryland, which is the largest Labrador retriever show in the world. I usually attend the yearly LRCP show with the intention of scouting for appropriate stud dogs for future breeding.