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 bird hunting, led me to my very first Pheasant hunting trip down Long Hollow Road when I was 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 and 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 too 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 Mark's 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 in 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 how to 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 dogs and men who only cared about shooting limits.  This different perspective created a wealth of possibility in my mind and my life would be changed forever. 

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By default the first two 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 hunter, but I was also interested in waterfowl hunting.  After that first exposure to those old VHS tapes my curiosity about Pointing Dogs began to grow and is still growing strong 30 years later.  Somehow shortly after graduating high school I heard of an AKC Hunt Test and that sounded like something I wanted to do.  I had a female yellow lab that was capable of running in an AKC 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.  Dakota was her name.  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 had gotten his start in Arizona training and campaigning more traditional pointing breeds and developing a successful program based on the practices perfected by Bill Gibbons.  While John was training pointing dogs and competing in NSTRA field trials in Arizona he had a client from Issaquah, Washington who bred Pointing Labs.  His time training those Labs and his desire to relocate created the perfect storm.  I like to think that he saw the dollar signs.  Nonetheless John moved to Ellensburg, Washington, started Tiger Mountain Pointing Labrodors.