I grew up in a family that always had and loved dogs. Although we thought that we were great caregivers to these good friends, what did we know. I had never heard of any dog clubs and training classes were unheard of in our town. Our dogs were just pets. How times have changed for me.

Bert and I acquired a Beagle named Tiger shortly after we got married. Since Bert had never had a dog of his own and we were living in a two family house, I thought a small dog would be best. Sure enough, Tiger stole our hearts and wound up in bed, under the sheets the first night with us

After buying a house of our own, we added a golden retriever to our family and after Tiger passed away we acquired a boxer, a breed I had owned as a child. The boxer breeder bred dogs for show. The one they sold us was a plain fawn female from a show line but not flashy enough to be shown. We did breed her and she produced our first breed champion! We got bit by the bug. To make a long story short, over the course of several years we bred and showed a few bitches and created a couple champions.

But there was something wrong. I wanted to be a handler myself, but not in the breed ring. I thought obedience might be fun, but after spending many hours training our boxers and achieving a CD at best, I came to the conclusion that neither the dogs nor I were having fun.

So, 22 years ago, I went off to dog camp in Vermont....me and my boxer Ozzie, where we spent all day and night together meeting over 100 campers and their dogs....an education in itself! There were many different sports and activities but I became hooked on agility.

After doing some research on Vizslas (probably not enough), we were put in touch with a breeder in Connecticut who had a litter on the ground. A couple weeks later Kahalie's Hi Time Independence, "Gunner", our first Vizsla puppy, came home with us. Yes, he certainly was a high energy dog. He opened my eyes to the won-derful experience of training and succeeding in several different areas that helped create a bond and trust between us that I had never known before. He achieved the Companion Dog (CD) title in Obedience, the Rally Excellent (RE) title in Rally Obedience, he was a Therapy Dog (THD) for many years helping the elderly, dementia patients, and children learning to read and the most outstanding title was the AKC MACH title.