Having a lifelong love of dogs, I had my first opportunity to have a purebred field dog, a German shorthaired pointer, in 1970.  I was fortunate that the quality of that shorthair pup, CH Dix's Schone Ilse, was such and my training was adequate enough that she not only finished her show championship, but became the top female German shorthair in show competition in a 6 state area for a period of time in the mid-1970s, until her tragic death when some unknown person poisoned her during a Nebraska hunting trip in November 1976.  I continued raising, training, field trialing and showing German shorthairs in the conformation ring through the 1980s.  During that period, I established Meglyn Kennels, named for my daughters, Megan and Carolyn.  Due to the virtual extirpation of the quail population in Ohio following the blizzard of 1978 and my increasing devotion to waterfowling, I acquired my first Labrador retriever, Sandcastle's Westminster Abbi, in 1987.  For almost two decades, I trained only my own Labs.  Finally, in 2003, I began to train professionally.  I train only a limited number of retrievers annually.  I actively compete with both my dogs and client dogs in both AKC and HRC hunting tests, generally putting 6-7 titles on dogs per year.