An American Kennel Club-sanctioned Retriever Club is up and running in Schoharie County, thanks largely to the work of Michelle Linnane of Stonewall Boarding, who sees it as just one more step toward combining lifelong interests in sporting dogs and the land.
Ms. Linnane grew up on a Columbia County dairy farm and lived and worked in information technology in Connecticut before buying 106 acres in Carlisle with plans of turning it into a top-notch facility for training field trial retrievers.
Though she didn't know it in 2004 when she moved there, others already had the same idea; working with people like Dave Graf of the Long Island Retriever Club, who bought land just over the hill in the Town of Root, Ms. Linnane's now been able to develop a network of almost 500 acres for training all within 20 minutes of each other.
“The first thing I thought of when I looked at the land was ponds. Lots of them,” Ms. Linnane said.
Unfortunately, there were none and water is a prerequisite for training retrivers.
But after talking with Soil & Water Conservation and learning the soil was all clay “and you couldn’t dig a hole without it filling with water,” Ms. Linnane began digging.
Today she has series of three training ponds and everywhere she looks she sees ponds just waiting to be dug.
To Ms. Linnane’s ponds she’s since added a 25-kennel boarding facility, built mostly with the help of neighbors and friends, and pens for the pheasants and ducks she and sportsmen who train there use both for their work and for the portion of Stonewall Boarding that’s a game preserve.
What’s more, Ms. Linnane has stocked her retriever training ponds with tilapia, a fish she believes can be raised here not only for sale locally, but also in downstate markets.
“It goes back to my farming background,” Ms. Linnane said. “That and the fact that in my IT job, I’m a problem solver and I’m used to finding different ways to do things. Even though I grew up on a dairy farm, I see agriculture as more than cows and I think there’s a lot of opportunity here.”
Though there aren’t enough hours in the day for Ms. Linnane to make all the improvements she envisions to her land, she’s turning her efforts in a slightly different direction.
Working with Mr. Graf she’s helped charter the Capital District Retriever Club and August 2-3, the club put on its first event, a two-day seminar given by Bobby George, one of the trainers at Bill and Becky Eckett’s Blackwater Kennels in Centerview, Missouri.
Blackwater is known for having trained four national field champions, the 1994 and '96 top Purina Open dog in the United States, and 65-plus field champions and Stonewall Boarding hosted the seminar.
Though the weather was rainy, participants got hands-on lessons in working their dogs and put on a training demonstration for guests that Saturday night.
“I didn’t have time to publicize it as much as I wanted to and that’s something I hope to build on,” Ms. Linnane said.
“People are amazed when they see what these wonderful, intelligent animals are capable of doing and it’s just a little bit of ‘giving back.’
“People have been great since I moved here…We really have the same interests. We welcome snowmobilers, turkey hunters…All we want to do is keep the land open and available so we can work and train our dogs.”
For more information on the Capital District Retriever Club and upcoming events at Stonewall Boarding, visit Ms. Linnane’s website, www.stonewallboarding.com.