The Boys

Lately I've been focusing on the "girls" at the house. With good reason of course! But it's a lot like kids- the more you have, the less pictures you take of the older ones. So when I stumbled on this picture of the boys, I had to post it. This was taken by a friend when we had taken the boys to a walk/run fundraiser.




On the left is Tucker, our yellow lab; center is Bubba, our male English Shepherd; on the right is Cooper, our German Shorthaired Pointer.

Tucker is from Westview Kennels in Elkhart Lake, WI. Both his sire (Calcutta) & dam (Candy) are Champion field Labs- both have fantastic abilities on scenting birds. They definitely passed that on to Tucker. Tucker is an incredibly smart dog; he was evaluated to be a service dog- and was only passed on because the group could only take one pup. He opens doors into the house, figures out how to get out of just about any kennel, and is very agile. He can find a tennis ball in about 15 seconds if he's really trying. One of his favorite things to do is to bring me all the dinner bowls so no one gets left out....

Bubba is from Ann & Jim Beebe in Scales Mound, IL. He came to us from another family who purchased him from Beebe's. They were an older couple who had some health issues and couldn't care for him at the time. I had been researching ES for quite some time, and since we do like to support rescue/rehome if we can, it seemed like a perfect thing to do. Bubba's pedigree goes back to Mohns, Beebe's, Anderson's, and beyond. He's been a great dog for us, although I do wish we had gotten him younger. He loves to take care of the lambs, keeps the rams off me when we're in the pen, and announces when we have visitors.

Cooper came to us from WI GSP Rescue at 11 months. He was turned over to the rescue group because his family couldn't control him anymore. His only problem was lack of appropriate supervision and proper pack order. A word of advice: don't buy a puppy for a child at the beginning of summer, let that child spend all summer playing with it, and then wonder why when the child goes back to school the pup gets naughty..... Cooper is a delight to have; he's very smart, very loving, but typical Shorthair, very demanding. Now that's he's 8, he's starting to slow down a little.