Our kennel name comes from the M109A6 Paladin is the name of the artillery piece that I have lived and breathed for the last 29 years. The circle on our logo represents the end of 155mm artillery round.
I started hunting when I was about 14. My parents didn’t hunt. I sought out and took hunter’s safety on my own. As soon as I was legal to hunt on my own, I used my paper route money to purchase a used shotgun. However, I still wasn’t old enough to drive so carried my shotgun on my bicycle to the edge of town and started walking the river bottoms. I took plenty of small game but was struggling to find a pheasant. At last it happened, I stumbled up a random Ring-neck and got a lucky shot. I soon realized that I couldn’t carry both my gun and my bird home on my bicycle, so I left my gun buried in the grass and took my bird home.
That day lit a fire for upland hunting in me that will burn as long as I have breath. I had trained a beagle mix for 4H obedience but I had no idea how useful a bird dog could be until I seen one in the field. In fact, it was a field that I had just covered. I had literally walked that field in a grid pattern and was convinced that there were no birds there. A guy rolled up and let a dog out. I tried to warn him that there were no birds in that field because I just walked it. He said “we’ll see” and a minute later his dog was on point. That did it for me. I had to get a dog.
It was a few years later, my young family and I were living on an acreage in the Spirit Lake, IA area. It was the middle 90s and prime time for CRP. I got my first gun dog and we had many successful seasons. That first dog taught me much and I will always be grateful to her.
The next chapter in our lives, took us to Carroll County, IA where I worked on a local police department. Gun dogs and pheasant hunting soon brought me together with a new group of friends and we hit it hard. My schedule allowed me to hunt at least 4 or 5 days a week but when season was over it left such a void that I had to find something to do in the off season. I began to study and learn everything that I could about gun dog training. Soon I was training my dogs with purpose and goals.
Around 2000 is when I saw an article in a back issue of Field and Stream magazine in which they featured Bob Farris of Cedarwood’s Gun Dogs and the Pudelpointer. I phoned Bob and convinced him that I was a worthy hunter and was able to get on his list. I drove out to Boise to pick up my pup and Bob was gracious enough to put me up for the night. Those few hours spent with Bob opened my eyes to capabilities and versatility of these dogs. He turned me on to NAVHDA and gave me some training goals. The dog was Cedarwood’s Just Do It “Garth” and he is featured on our home page. I was able to get take him thru the Natural Ability test (112) and started training for the UT when our lives changed again.
9/11 happened. It turned our lives upside down. I left Law Enforcement in order to go active duty with my National Guard unit and moved my family back to MN. I barely had time to get my family settled before we were “wheels up” on a deployment. While overseas, I was fortunate enough to spend some time Germany and I managed to track down a Pudelpointer breeder. I bought a pup and it arrived soon after I got home. Yala was a very good dog but I didn’t do much with her. I eventually gave her to a friend that could hunt her more than I could. I still had Garth and military life got too busy for me to hunt two dogs hard. In fact, I didn’t do much with dogs for the next 10 years.
2011, I found myself sweating buckets in the Kuwait desert and dreaming about Gun Dogs. Missing opening day of IA pheasant season was hard. Not as hard as missing holidays and special occasions with family but it was close. I decided that I wanted a pup for when I got home. A big part of that, was that I wanted to get my son involved in working dogs. I called Bob Farris when I was still in Kuwait but he didn’t have any available in the time frame that I wanted. He was able to arrange for me to get a pup from Hardtrigger Kennels. Hardtrigger’s Stella arrived that June and my son, Adam and I worked her that summer and fall. The next spring, Adam handled her to Prize 1 (110) Natural Ability test. Later that fall Adam and I took a trip to North Dakota just him and I. We shot many ducks over Stella and had a great time.
That trip and Stella’s performance the rest of that fall is what made we realize that I wanted to become a breeder. Between Stella, Garth and Yala I knew that there was no other breed for me. I think that my military bearing, leadership, and application of the military values bring a set of skills that are easily applied to dog work. I have been conditioned to see the big picture and develop training plans, and readiness goals that are realistic, fluent, and kinetic. By kinetic I mean real world effectiveness in the field. We produce dogs and train for the way we hunt.
