Long Hollow Road will lead you to a quiet cabin built by the most hospitable, hard working, family man I ever knew.  Craig Culbertson was a wheat farmer, husband, father, coach, friend and all around good man.  I cannot say the same about my own father, but I can say that my Dad's obsession with hunting, led me to my very first Pheasant hunting trip down Long Hollow Road when I was just 12 years old. 

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Rewind a few years.  As the story is told, my dad and his buddies were exploring the Palouse for Pheasants.  Somehow they ended up lost and sleeping under their truck at the end of a road in a rain storm.  At some point they were noticed by the land owner.  The sympathetic farmer proceeded to offer up his barn to this diehard group of young bird hunters. That is how the tradition of Pheasant hunting down Long Hollow Road began.  For many years to follow my Dad and his friends were invited back to the wheat farm annually by Craig Culbertson and his family, for some of the best Pheasant hunting and Deer hunting that Washington State had to offer.

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Although I have a few vague memories of a Brittany and a Vizsla somewhere along the line.  It was Labrador Retrievers that my father chased upland birds with traditionally.  What I also remember is that the Pheasant numbers were so good back then, that a poorly trained, average gun dog, could make a bird hunter with a monster ego, look like a hero.  Without going into to much detail about my childhood.  When I was 12 years old my Grandpa felt compelled to pick me up one day, drive me from Redmond Washington to Colfax for my very first hunting trip and for a rare visit with my biological father.

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A more vivid and positive memory from my childhood is that of a Black Lab named "Sheen".  Sheen dog was owned by my Uncle Mark who was my Mom's brother.  Mark had been in an accident where he had fallen asleep at the wheel in his early 20's and was a paraplegic.  That did not slow him down from his passion for Duck Hunting and Fly fishing however.  Mark was an avid outdoorsman and I have fond memories of blowing duck calls, throwing the ball for his dog, riding around in his wheel chair and trips to the lake.  I was always very impressed with Sheen's drive for retrieving and the way she set the tennis ball on his lap after every retrieve.  In retrospect there was something special about that dog that left a lasting impression for sure.

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After my first trip to the Palouse at just 12 years old, it was the hospitality of the Culbertson family, the wheat farm itself, the extraordinary bird hunting, the adventure, the shotguns, and the bird dogs that changed the course of my life forever.  In addition to all the positive memories, there were plenty of opportunities for my young open mind to see and experience things that in my heart, for some reason, I just knew were not right.  Early memories of hunting with my dad and his friends were often a lesson in my life about who I did not want to be, and what I did not want to do...  Learning is always a combination of dos and don'ts.  There are always people in our life that we can emulate in order to learn what to do.  On the contrary, there are those people in our life that are an obvious example of what not to do.  My father was that person for me.  I have felt for many years that all the bad experiences and bad dogs I was fortunate to hunt with as a kid, led me to my ongoing desire to be better.

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As I grew into my teenage years, with my mother moving further from reality, I found myself with no other option than to finally go live with my Dad in Idaho.  This move did not create less turmoil in my life, but at 14 years old I began to find sanctuary living in the country, being in the field with dogs, bird hunting, hanging out with my friends, riding dirt bikes and playing sports.  This was an opportunity to do more of that, and I think I was just ready for change.  I remember my first real experience in training dogs was actually well before I had my own.  A couple summers I spent working on a dairy farm and acquiring dogs out of the local paper to train and sell, so that I could save up enough money to buy my very first Shotgun.  I had no idea what I was doing but I was willing to try.  My first dog training video was a low budget VHS by George Hickox sponsored by Innotek.  George's southern accent and his mild manner, along with the many great dogs he shared opened my eyes to a whole new world and I was hooked.  I also remember somehow getting a hold of an old VHS tape of the National Bird Dog Championship at Ames Plantation.  This was all so mind blowing to me at the time.  I was just a teenager whose only experience bird hunting was with untrained flushing dogs and men who only cared about killing anything that moved.  This different perspective created a wealth of possibility in my very young, impressionable mind.

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By default the first few dogs that I actually owned were Labrador Retrievers.  Labs are what I knew, I was comfortable and familiar with them, and I was an upland bird and waterfowl hunter.  After my first exposure to those old VHS tapes my curiosity about Pointing Dogs began to grow.  Somehow, shortly after graduating high school I heard of an AKC Hunt Test.  That sounded like something I wanted to do.  I had a female yellow lab that was capable of running in a  Junior Hunt Test.  So I attend my first event, she passed, I got my first orange ribbon and the rest is history as they say. The same yellow lab that helped me train and handle my first dog to an AKC Junior Hunter title also achieved her AKC Senior Hunter title and somewhere along the line I had met a guy by the name of John Greer.  John owned Tiger Mountain Pointing Labradors, but he got his start in Arizona training and campaigning more traditional pointing breeds and developing a successful program based on the practices perfected by guys like Bill Gibbons.  While John was training pointing dogs and competing in NSTRA field trials in Arizona he had a client from Issaquah Washington.  Vinny owned and bred Pointing Labs.  John's time training those Labs and his desire to relocate created the perfect storm.  Nonetheless John moved to Ellensburg Washington to  start Tiger Mountain Pointing Labradors.  Jump forward a few years.  John Greer was a very good pointing dog trainer, and business owner, that liked to make money, hunt birds, and drink beer.   I believe somewhere along the line he realized in order for his program to grow, he was going to have to prove that his Pointing Labs were versatile. So he needed to start retriever training and to get involved in the waterfowl hunting and AKC hunt test community.  And that is how our paths crossed. 

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Prior to this I had actually bought a dog or two from John, and my wife at the time had been on one of those trips to Riverbottom road in Ellensburg Washington.  In the winter of 2003 I was married, my first born son was about 6 months old, I was working as a Journeyman Plumber in Seattle Washington.  Ironically we had already started looking at homes in Ellensburg with the intent of moving out of Seattle area.  Which meant I would have to commute from eastern Washington to western Washington over Snoqualmie pass for work.  One miserable rainy day in Seattle I was sitting in my work van, taking lunch, and dreading the thought of going back into that wet crawlspace under the house I was working on at the time.  My phone rang and I recognized the number.  It was John Greer of Tiger Mountain Pointing Labradors in Ellensburg Washington.  Of course I answered the call and he proceeded to tell me that he was looking to hire a dog trainer.  I was totally caught off guard but he continued.  Explaining that there was an empty house on the property I could live in, and he would pay me a salary to train dogs for him full time.  It was an interesting phone call for sure.  I think I spent the remainder of that day sitting in my warm van consumed by contemplation.  To date, the thought of training dogs for a living had never crossed my mind.  So that evening was like any other, but in conversation with my wife, I brought up the strange phone call I had received from John Greer.  Her instant response went something like this... "you mean that guy with the pointing labs that you bought that dog from?  You mean that place in Ellensburg right along the Yakima River?  That place is so beautiful.  You hate your job.  We are moving"...  So I called him back the very next day.  We had an in person meeting at some point and that December I moved my family into that little red house on Riverbottom road.  

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So I handed in my amateur status, and my career as a professional dog trainer was under way.  Starting with a kennel full of Labs, bred, raised, and trained to run, hunt, and point upland game birds.  I was faced with the challenge of putting every one of John Greer's pointing labs through force fetch and basic retriever training that first winter and spring of 2003.  I vividly remember being very overwhelmed, and not sure what I had just gotten myself into.  But in hindsight, the challenges I was faced with in the very beginning of my career helped to lay a foundation for what was to come, and I wouldn't have had it any other way.  During that 6 years I was contracted to manage the kennel and train all the dogs, I was given so much responsibility and opportunity to grow.  My Job was to manage the kennel, train the dogs, and everything in between.  It was a large operation and I worked many long hours with very few days off but I have no regrets.  I used my knowledge and experience with Retrievers to help his program grow into one of the top Pointing Lab producers in the country, and John reciprocated by paying forward to me, his passion and experience with pointing dogs.  I acquired my first English Setters during that time.  My job was training bird dogs and campaigning Labs in AKC and APLA hunt tests but in my free time I was developing my own passion for Setters, Chukar hunting and NSTRA field trials.  So much learning and fun was had during that time and I will be forever grateful for the time I spent with John Greer of Tiger Mountain Pointing Labradors.  We accomplished a lot together having titled some AKC hunt test dogs and a few of the very first APLA Grand Master Pointing Retrievers in the Northwest.  

 

As my family and confidence grew along with my lack of interest in pointing labs.  It was clearly time to for me to move on.  Long Hollow Retrievers was truly established many years prior, but the kennel opened and the business license went on the wall at our new place on Schnebly Road in the spring of 2009.  During this time my passion for English Setters and all things pointing dogs was continuing to grow.  But at that point in my life, the only thing I knew I could make money at in order to support my family, was breeding and training of Labrador Retrievers.  I also had not yet trained, campaigned, and titled an AKC Master Hunter or qualified a dog for the AKC Master National.  That became the goal and proceeded to consume my life for the next 3 years along with raising my kids, and coaching baseball.  

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