We live on a family farm in the Appalachian Foothills of Northeast Mississippi's Hill Country. We have raised four children, and now me and my husband live and farm with our two Aussies. We enjoy hiking, traveling, and working on projects on our 108 year-old home and farm land. Though we both now work at my husband's civil engineering firm, I also have been a professional photographer and journalist/media designer for more than 25 years.
I've shown and trained dogs nearly all my life, starting with the family standard poodles as a junior handler in Oklahoma. I finished my Italian Greyhound when I was 14, and handled various other breeds for friends, in addition to always helping groom those poodles! After college I showed a smooth fox terrier, and after establishing a family, showed one of our three Weimaraners and nearly finished our Shoreland border collie before she was injured. All these dogs were also obedience trained, though we never competed.
When the kids were very little, a beautiful blue merle dog we named Bonnie showed up and was a fantastic family dog. We had no idea where she came from, but in hindsight, she had a lot of Aussie in her. Just a couple years ago, we got another Aussie from a local borderline puppy mill breeder, with the predictable health results; and then, he was accidentally hit and killed before he was two.
When looking for a new dog, my youngest daughter and I considered Aussies because we wanted a farm-friendly dog (the Weimaraners were quite good at killing all furry and feathered things - cats, rabbits, armadillos, and even a small pig once!) We also knew we wanted a dog from a good breeder.
After finding a few people with Top 20 Aussies who were super nice and helpful, everything worked together for me to return to training and showing in earnest, and with my youngest, Emma, alongside, we have had the best time! All the Aussie people have been so great to help us re-learn the ropes and take advantage of all the new AKC dog sports that have come to be since I was last showing. I've been blessed with some super-smart dogs, and me and Emma enjoy training, showing and loving on them full time.
Right now, we are working toward several performance titles on both our Aussies, who we think are fantastic representatives of the breed. They are clever, and always wanting to please, but they have that great "off switch" too, which makes them really easy to live with. I'm not sure why I imagined there would be minimal grooming, but, at least it's worth the work on pretty dogs!
We are big believers in Puppy Culture, and have used many of the associated training protocols with great results. If we breed in the future, we will definitely be using Puppy Culture!