What started as a shared love for hunting and a desire for good hunting dogs has turned into a passion that has grown into something bigger than either of us dreamed possible. Jessica grew up hunting all sorts of game with her family and always had at least one lab around. These dogs were part of the family and always came along on duck and pheasant hunts. Casey started duck hunting in his later teens and shot his first pheasant in his early 20's. He got his first lab shortly after picking up duck hunting and Fred soon after getting hooked on pheasants. Casey's first lab Poncho was let's say...special. After we met, we started hunting together and with others. We started to realize that while we had good dogs but that they could be better. Since then we have searched out the blood lines that fit our needs and personalities, and have spent a lot of time learning how to properly train our dogs to get the most out of them.
We had our first litter of puppies in 2012 and were extremely satisfied with the results. It was a challenging but very rewarding experience and something we will continue to do as long as we have dogs that we want to have their traits continue into future generations and that preserve the breed. For us, this is being crazy about birds, a desire to retrieve, easy to train, and good manners. Everyone has their own reason to breed dogs but this is what means the most to us.
In the spring of 2013 we joined the Jim River Hunting Retriever Club (HRC). We both wanted to meet other dog owners that shared our passion and find some new training techniques. Through this group we started running our dogs in hunting retriever tests. We also ran a couple of Ellie's puppies in tests the first year (Isa and Drake). We immediately loved running the dogs in tests not only for the satisfaction of seeing our hard work pay off but also to meet more people in the dog training world. We felt a camaraderie with other hunt test rookies and were lucky enough to be taken in by some hunt test pros. It really is a close-knit family that we are glad to be a part of. As we have progressed in our training, we have also taken up training for field trials. We started running Hooch and Wally in Quals in 2015 and our plan is to continue running these events with the hope of getting QAA on our dogs. We take great pride in the fact that all of our dogs have been trained by us. We have asked for guidance from professional trainers to assist along the way, but none of our dogs have never been sent to a pro. We plan to continue running our labs in these competitions with our ultimate goal of getting some of them to be Grand Retriever Champions or run them in All-Age Stakes.
We had been getting requests from others to train their dogs so we started taking on a few dogs to train in 2019. We are very thankful to those first few clients that trusted us with their dogs! We started with just a few dogs as we both had other full-time jobs at the time. As the years went by, we were getting more requests to train dogs. In June 2021, Casey retired from his other job and started training full-time. It has been a busy, but good transition and again we can't thank our clients enough for keeping our kennel full!
Many people ask how we came up with 'FR Labs'. Casey's middle name is Fry and Jessica's middle name is Frances, both of our middle names are family names. We took the first 2 letters from both of our middle names to come up with FR.
We had our first litter of puppies in 2012 and were extremely satisfied with the results. It was a challenging but very rewarding experience and something we will continue to do as long as we have dogs that we want to have their traits continue into future generations and that preserve the breed. For us, this is being crazy about birds, a desire to retrieve, easy to train, and good manners. Everyone has their own reason to breed dogs but this is what means the most to us.
In the spring of 2013 we joined the Jim River Hunting Retriever Club (HRC). We both wanted to meet other dog owners that shared our passion and find some new training techniques. Through this group we started running our dogs in hunting retriever tests. We also ran a couple of Ellie's puppies in tests the first year (Isa and Drake). We immediately loved running the dogs in tests not only for the satisfaction of seeing our hard work pay off but also to meet more people in the dog training world. We felt a camaraderie with other hunt test rookies and were lucky enough to be taken in by some hunt test pros. It really is a close-knit family that we are glad to be a part of. As we have progressed in our training, we have also taken up training for field trials. We started running Hooch and Wally in Quals in 2015 and our plan is to continue running these events with the hope of getting QAA on our dogs. We take great pride in the fact that all of our dogs have been trained by us. We have asked for guidance from professional trainers to assist along the way, but none of our dogs have never been sent to a pro. We plan to continue running our labs in these competitions with our ultimate goal of getting some of them to be Grand Retriever Champions or run them in All-Age Stakes.
We had been getting requests from others to train their dogs so we started taking on a few dogs to train in 2019. We are very thankful to those first few clients that trusted us with their dogs! We started with just a few dogs as we both had other full-time jobs at the time. As the years went by, we were getting more requests to train dogs. In June 2021, Casey retired from his other job and started training full-time. It has been a busy, but good transition and again we can't thank our clients enough for keeping our kennel full!
Many people ask how we came up with 'FR Labs'. Casey's middle name is Fry and Jessica's middle name is Frances, both of our middle names are family names. We took the first 2 letters from both of our middle names to come up with FR.