Hey there! I'm Jeni, and my husband Joe and I are the folks who keep everybody fed around here.
Three days before my eighth birthday, I opened the door of our family car and met Duke. He was a cocker/Brittany mix, eight(ish) weeks old, and he was my surprise birthday present. Our family had a field-bred English Springer, who I'd grown up with, but Duke was MINE. I promptly joined the local 4-H club and learned countless valuable lessons about sportsmanship, dog health, grooming, training, showing, and breed identification. I soon learned about the Welsh Springer and I became convinced, in a way that only a nine-year-old can be, that the cocker and Brittany must have been among its foundation breeds—after all, my dog was clearly a wonderful example of a Welsh. (Note, in case it's not obvious: Duke was beautiful, but not at all a good example of a Welsh.) I wrote a letter to the corresponding secretary of the Welsh Springer Spaniel Club of America asking about the breed's foundations, and they actually responded, which I now realize was really very kind of them. The secretary patiently explained that the Welsh Springer is actually an ancient breed, so old that it's impossible to pinpoint one or two founding breeds, and probably at least as old as the cocker and Brittany. My “discovery” was debunked, but my love for Welshies was solidified, despite my never having met one.
Duke passed away from a suspected brain tumor shortly before my fifteenth birthday. He had had a wonderful 4-H career as a top winning fitting and showing dog, and I was in love with dogs and dog shows, showing my 4-H leaders' dogs at AKC shows and itching for a purebred of my own. I wrote a letter to the only Welsh Springer breeder who advertised in the back of Dog Fancy magazine and a few months later we brought home Buddy, my first Welshie, and the first one I ever met in person. Unfortunately, Buddy developed epilepsy and my show dog dreams were put on hold.
BUT once you catch that Welshie bug, it doesn't go away. A few years later, as a real life adult engaged to be married and working from home, a dog felt like the right next step. So Joe and I brought home Seamus, CH Fireside’s Flyin’ Home. It was Joe's first experience owning a dog, and it was definitely a trial by fire. Raising a puppy in a third floor walk-up on the southside of Chicago is not for the faint of heart! We survived and fell deeply in love with this sweet, exasperating, goofy, wonderful breed. I began showing again with Seamus and finished his championship, we added honorary Welshie Pearl (a German shorthair/collie mix), then we took some time to raise some humans. Seamus lived to be 16 years old, and Pearl passed shortly before her sixteenth birthday. We miss them every single day.
Shortly after Pearl's passing, we added Felix to our empty house and his phenomenal temperament settled Welshies forever in our hearts. I began showing and studying the breed in earnest, and have been so fortunate to have had amazing mentors along the way.
Today we live at Rainbow's End, our small farm in rural Washington state, and share our lives with the dogs, our three kids (who are now teens and young adults), a horse, some cats, a few goats, and a whole bunch of chickens. Our dogs are family: they live with us in the house, underfoot and on our furniture. They romp through our fields and pastures, swim in the ocean, hike the PNW mountains and beaches, and make our lives better in countless ways.