Brooke Jenkins

People always ask how I got started breeding, I started breeding in 2018, but the story actually goes back a little before that. I was playing college softball at the time, and my 10-week-old puppy broke her femur. The vet bills were expensive, and I ended up quitting softball so I could work and pay for her surgery and care. My vet told me that once she was older and health cleared, I should consider breeding her to help cover the expenses, especially because he had never seen her color before. She was fox red, and he told me she was something special. When she was finally old enough and fully health tested and cleared, I trusted his advice and bred my first litter… and almost every puppy was spoken for before they were even born. That’s when I realized this was something I truly loved. Since then, every dog I breed is health tested, AKC registered, and raised in my home with love. My puppies grow up around kids, other dogs, cats, noise, and everyday life so they are ready for real homes, not just perfect conditions. I have produced many, many hunters from my litters, as well as search and rescue dogs, service dogs, and even EMT working dogs, which makes me more proud than anything. For a long time, my dogs were my kids. I tried for so long to have my daughter, and while I was going through that, my dogs were everything to me. They still are. When I finally got pregnant, I actually took over a year off from breeding so I could just spend time with my dogs and prepare for my baby. My daughter was born in November, and now she’s growing up right in the middle of the same home full of dogs that mean the world to me. Every dog I have ever owned has left a mark on me, literally. I have each of their names and paw prints tattooed on my arm, because to me they aren’t just dogs — they’re family, they’re my heart, and they’re the reason this all started. I didn’t start breeding for money. I started because of one dog, one accident, one vet who believed in her, and a love for these animals that never went away. I also always keep a puppy from her lineage to keep her bloodline going. It’s important to me to always have a piece of her here, so that one day when she isn’t with me anymore, a part of her still will be.