When 2013 rolled around we were driving on the Blue Ridge Parkway in our 11-passenger van with our 5 small children when we came across a pair of absolutely gorgeous German shepherds that had run away from home. They were tired and hungry and smelled as if they had an unfortunate encounter with a skunk. The female came and sat on Lois’s feet and when we attempted to persuade the male closer with our ham and cheese sandwiches, he hightailed it down the trail. After another failed attempt to try and catch the male dog (and keep the pair together), we loaded up the female who the children had already befriended and named Parkway into the van. After we brought Parkway home, we gave her a bath, fed her and began to make attempts to locate her owners. Finally, after 3 days we found and contacted her owners, and made arrangements to return her to her family. We learned that her real name was Stormy and in those three days with her we became extremely attached because of her intelligence and protective nature toward the children against anything she considered a threat.

Several weeks later Stormy’ s owners called us to tell us that Stormy was having a litter of puppies and wanted to give us a puppy as a thank you for returning Stormy. We were so excited for our little German shepherd puppy, and our children were as well so we named her Parkway after her mother. We now have several German shepherds and our oldest is in fact parkway she is 9 years old is fat and happy. And that is how our adventure began with German Shepards.

It is now 2023 and we have 9 children, and we still love raising puppies. We own a small farm and rent several acres in Franklin County, VA, where we raise cows, sheep, goats, and chickens and sometimes pigs and rabbits, cats and more. We also keep several acres of hay which we use for our own livestock and sell. We live off the land and grow our own food as much as possible. Our children love the animals and puppies and several of them have their own special dogs. Jeremiah who is our second oldest has actually taken over the German Shepherds and has several of his own which he raises so that he can pay for college. My wife and I continue raising our English and American Labrador retrievers and we look forward to sharing them with you.