Chief has puppies!

At five years of age, Chief got to do what we have been promising him for five years... breed a lovely lady. Dan Goetz has a pretty little black lab who 'met' Chief for the first time a couple of months ago. The did their thing and J.C. delivered the puppies a couple of weeks ago. She has 9 puppies (good job girl!)... six black and three yellow. When we went to see them on there second day of life, we saw this little yellow puppy, who's head was noticeably larger than the others, who was aggressively climbing his way between all the other puppies to find some food. You could see all of his shoulder muscles straining as he was determined to get to the front. Matt and I looked at each other and said, there is "mini - Chief". I am soooooo not wanting another dog, but I do hope that whoever gets 'little' Chief gives him as much love and attention that his daddy has had the last five years. Even though I pull my hair out over all the hair throughout my house (no pun intended) I am thankful for our pup! The following is the letter I wrote to the new puppy owners. We love you Chief (or as Madi says, Chee Chee).

Chief was born on May 2nd, 2006. When we picked him up about 8 weeks later, we were so excited to bring him home. I’ll never forget the four hour ride home with little Chief snuggled in on my lap. We stopped about half way home to let him run for awhile. He was playing in the grass when Matt yelled, “Chief - SIT!”... and sit he did. We looked at each other in awe. We brought him home and he slept wonderfully that first night in his kennel. I do have to admit, this was a bit of a ‘honeymoon’ phase and it did take a lot of training to make him into the dog he is, but he has been a wonderful addition to our family. We have raised him as an indoor dog, and we soon realized that if we took the time to wear him out in the morning, he was wonderful the rest of the day. We are both active people and Chief gets his exercise by going on long runs through the park or endless tosses of frisbee. You can tell that he comes from a long line of dogs that work hard. He is built so well physically and would work for you for hours. He would make a wonderful bird dog as I’m sure his puppies would. We don’t have the time to compete with Chief, but we have taken him to some local ‘fun’ competitions. He has battled between 1st and 2nd place for three years in a row at the local frisbee throwing contest (if you give him a good throw, he always catches it). Last spring we signed him up for a dock dogs competition... not really know what we were getting ourselves into. Almost every dog there had traveled from several states away and had brought their ‘serious dock jumping gear’. Chief and I humbly stepped up onto the dock, not really knowing what either of us would do, and he jumped his way to third place... wowing the crowd. Needless to say, Chief is an incredibly fun, active, and naturally athletic dog!

We knew when getting Chief that labs were known to be very good with kids. Two years ago, Matt and I had our first little girl and now have a six month old boy. I have been absolutely amazed at how gentle and loving he is towards them. I can honestly say that I have never once, in two years, been nervous about having him around our kids. Madison is now old enough to ‘play’ with him. He lets her pick up and throw his frisbee, sits when he tells her to, hand him dog treats(and I do mean ‘hand’ them to him... as he gently nibbles it away from her little fingers), feed him his food (while he waits patiently for her to say “o-tay Chee Chee”), and pull his tail while she laughs hysterically, skiing behind him. I remember when he was little, we would ‘dig’ in his dog food while he ate it to train him not to be ‘overly protective’ of his food. I am so grateful that we did this as I often see Madison picking up the food that dropped out of Chiefs bowl and put it back in his dish. He has been absolutely wonderful with our two little kids.

I am very excited for you to have one of Chief’s puppies. We hope you give him/her lots of love and attention... he/she won’t let you down! The five years we have spent with him have been wonderful!

Matt and Emily Hoffert