OUR STORY

Pursuing our Dream

We have for many years been dreaming of a small business we could start and build together doing something we really enjoy.  Now that are children are grown and have families of their own and retirement from our current careers is in the foreseeable future, we are actively working on starting that small business we have envisioned and dreamed about.  We have always been dog lovers and have a true passion for the Labrador retriever breed.  Our daughter and her husband acquired a great male lab named Hunter early in their marriage before children came along.  They spent a lot of time with Hunter and he sped through hunt trials and was named the Delmarva dog of the year.  Our son-in-law is an avid hunter and Hunter was his field companion for many years.  They always wanted to breed Hunter because he was such an exceptional lab.  We decided we would try to find an equally exceptional female lab that we could use for breeding with Hunter.  We were blessed to acquire Dixie from Paradise Alley breeders (also known as Peaches and Pups) in the spring of 2014.  Dixie was the last puppy available from the last litter between Andi and Floyd and she turned out to be an exceptional lab as well.  We were able to breed Dixie and Hunter in the summer of 2016 and Dixie had a small first litter with three puppies in September 2016.  Our daughter and her husband kept the one male named Maverick from that litter.  They have two young children and lead extremely busy lives and contemplated not keeping a puppy from that litter but thankfully they did make the decision to keep Maverick because tragically we lost Hunter before we could breed him again with Dixie for a second litter.  As we performed the research to acquire Dixie and setup our initial breeding, we realized a small breeding operation would be the perfect small business for us to start and build together slowly as we wrap down our current careers.  We learned a lot during that first breeding and litter and really loved the experience.  We decided we would pursue our dream and start building a new Labrador retriever breeding operation on our property on Maryland’s beautiful Eastern Shore.  We whelp our puppies in our home and start socializing them from the very beginning.  We were fortunate to find a great sire named Major to breed with Dixie for her second litter which is due soon.  We are very excited as this is a much larger litter and these should be wonderful puppies.  We thank God for this wonderful opportunity that he has placed in front of us.  We are looking forward to acquiring additional females and growing our breeding operation but our intent is to stay small with our primary goal being on quality and not on quantity.  If you are looking for that special new lab companion, we would love to talk with you.
Tom and Kathy Stephanos – December 2017