HOW IT STARTED

"I was born in Indiana but spent most of my life in the southern US until a few years after high school. I worked a lot and moved around of course, eventually finishing an associate degree (office admin) and bachelor degree in business management (and history). Work initially brought me back to Indiana but something was missing. Dog-Mom life began for me when I rescued Annie as a puppy in 2017 and welcomed Buddy as a puppy in 2019. I also obtained a master's degree in business (management and leadership) using the global pandemic's downtime to tackle that hurdle. Still ... I felt a tug from the animal world and so I sought out to become a legit dog breeder, with Annie and Buddy as the founding pair of the program.

Let me rewind a bit to life in the South... We weren't allowed a dog during my younger years, which led me to spend a lot of time next door--they had dogs and one was named Brownie. You get your 'fix' in where you can, am I right? Years later, my mom assumed ownership of a family member's dog-- Patriot the Bull-Pei. It's really Patriot who was the first Shar-Pei mix I met... or at least the first one I remember meeting. I loved her personality, loyalty, and of course the wrinkles. Patriot weighed a bit more than I was comfortable handling sometimes though. I took this all into consideration when looking for my own dog. I wanted a Shar-Pei mix but deliberately looked for the other breed in the mix to be something lighter in weight than the Bull-Pei. When I came across Annie's listing on Craigslist (true story), I figured it would be worth checking her out first... and the rest is history."

Contact us if there is something more you are curious about learning from Nancy, or if you have a topic you would like to see covered in an upcoming Collar Holler post.