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About Us |
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Scott is a science teacher and Cortney is a wildlife biologist. Both of us grew up hunting. After we got married, it seemed only
natural to get a gundog. We ended up with an independent,
high-strung dog whose breed we won't even name :-) As a result,
our search for a second gundog was much more thorough. We wanted a talented gundog with a calm
temperament. To ensure that our new dog had excellent hunting ability, we
restricted our search to dogs with performance (hunt testing) standards.
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That is when we got really interested in
German-bred dogs: Deutsch Drahthaars, Deutsch Kurzhaars, and Deutsch Langhaars.
All three breeds have strict breeding and testing regulations.
We ruled out Kurzhaars because we live in Wisconsin and duck hunt a
lot. We decided to go with a Deutsch Langhaar because
langhaars are on average a little softer than drahthaars (in terms
of temperament). Also, we liked the look a little more. |
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We got our first Deutsch Langhaar (or German
Longhair) in December of 2005. We drove to Denver, Colorado
the day after Christmas to pick up Kaylee from Illertal Kennel.
She was an incredibly easy puppy to raise and it was really
rewarding to have a
dog who could sleep in our laps and be bird-crazy in the field. |
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The idea of testing a hunting dog was a little scary at first, but we
quickly found that testing was the best way to train for the hunting
season. Today, we own 2 German Longhairs that we train, test,
and hunt with. We live in Central Wisconsin and are pretty busy
year-round with the dogs. In the fall, we hunt woodcock,
ruffed grouse, ducks, geese, rabbits, and squirrels. We also
hunt deer but have not yet had the opportunity to test our dogs' blood tracking
skills on a wounded deer! Cortney is originally from Nebraska so
every year, we take at least one trip back to Nebraska to hunt
pheasants, quail, prairie chickens, and sharptail grouse.
Scott is from Wyoming so every once in a while, we like to head
back there to try our hand with sage grouse or blue
grouse. |
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During the rest of the year, we spend a lot of time training and
testing our
dogs. We believe that testing your hunting dog is an excellent
way to explore all of your dog's potential and to keep
you both on track so you can be prepared for the hunting season. We
test our dogs in the VHDF (www.vhdf.org),
NAVHDA (www.navhda.org),
and the JGHV (www.jgv-usa.org).
All 3 testing systems are a lot of fun, require similar
training, and provide us with non-biased evaluations of our dogs'
natural ability and trainability.
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Our first longhair, Kaylee, is such a great dog. It wasn't
long before we started getting requests for puppies out of
her. Everyone from our vet to gunners at hunting tests.
We always thought that if we did breed her or any other longhair,
that our breeding priorities would be to produce hunting dogs with calm, cooperative
temperaments. It is amazing how much easier it is to train a
dog that wants to please you. Our other longhair (Gera), also exhibits this calm, cooperative trait combined with
excellent hunting ability.
We decided to name our kennel Coraschatten in honor of Kaylee.
Kaylee's registered name is Cora vom Illertal. "Schatten"
is the German word for shadow. So, Coraschatten literally
means Cora Shadow or Cora's Shadow. We do feel like every dog
we ever own or produce will be compared to Kaylee and will have to
live up to her standard. Thus, we felt it was appropriate to
name our kennel Cora's Shadow. We hope that by breeding German
Longhairs, we will be able to provide hunters with a dog that they
enjoy living and hunting with as much as we have enjoyed Kaylee. |
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