OUR STORY

We got out start as professional dog trainers, handling high drive working breeds in a variety of canine sports.  We had a lot of success early in our careers particularly with dogs that had been deemed "too quirky" to invest in higher level competition by other handlers.  For some reason, the "fly snappier" the German Shepherd, the more "stranger suspicious" the Australian Cattle Dog, the more we wanted to understand how to direct and motivate and partner.  Thanks to amazing mentorships from other amazing trainers and rescue organzination we were able to work with and partner on 100s of behavioral cases and other training work that led us ultimately into full time canine rescue and rehabilitation work.  

 

We spent nearly 10 years managing and consulting non profit rescues, rehabilitating and learning from some truly amazing dogs and teaching/training owners and handlers new ways to connect with their intelligent and high drive dogs that had experienced mishandling in the past.  It was a remarkable decade and we are ever grateful for those dogs and the lessons they learned.  

 

We do not undertake a breeding program without serious consideration for the lessons learned from a decade spent in the rescue field.  The weight and responsibility of breeding and breed conservatorship as well as the placement and life time care of those animals produced under our watch is of the utmost importance to us. 

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During that time, we had the privilege of a adopting, what we thought was a 10 month old border collie, into our family.  However, pretty quickly we recognized some traits that were not typical of border collies we'd worked with/trained in the past.  Which led us down the road of investigation and study (this was before the time of readily available and affordable K9 DNA tests). 

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Our research led us to discover that we had inadvertently welcomed a McNab into our pack - and it ended up being the gift of a lifetime and inspired a love affair of a breed that brings us here to Silver Thistle McNabs. 

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Cosmo, that 10 month old McNab, is no longer with us, after 18 years amazing years with us he passed away peacefully here at our ranch in the PNW.  It is in his honor that we welcomed Stirling from Garcin McNabs to our pack several years ago, and we have remained as smitten with this breed as we ever could be.  

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It is our sincere hope and goal that everyone who meets one of our dogs is as immediately taken their charm, intelligence, sense of humor and incredible desire to work as we are.  

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