Four Generations of Canine Lovers/ Competitors

 

This is the tale of four generations of a family whose love for Labradors has been passed down over time. It’s dedicated to the family of Terry Andrich (1930-2020), who passed away in June as this article was being written. Mrs. Andrich, who was the devoted matriarch of three generations of Labrador lovers, imparted her deep love and respect for all animals to her family and friends.

 

 

The love of Labrador retrievers runs through the veins of four generations of this Arizona family. They’ve competed with their beloved dogs in American Kennel Club (AKC) field trials, the conformation ring, countless performance events, pee wee classes, and junior handling competitions over a span of seventy years!

Participation at these events has meant more family time together and even helped pay for one veterinary school education. Family members say training and showing dogs has taught responsibility and sportsmanship to the younger generation. Three generations currently participate in the dog fancy.

First Generation

In the late 1950s, Terry and Richard Andrich moved from the Windy City to Chatham, NJ, where they raised their daughter Judie and introduced her to their love of Labradors and field trials.

The family lived on acreage but kept several mallard ducks in their home’s basement! The ducks were used to train their Labradors.

Judie grew up accompanying her parents to field trials where she watched them compete with their dogs and helped care for a couple of Labrador litters. But she wanted a toy poodle, probably she thinks decades later, because her favorite stuffed toy was a poodle named Petey! Her parents acquiesced by buying their only offspring a standard poodle that loved to retrieve. Young Judie had fun training Sandy but gave him to their veterinarian when her dad was transferred back to the Midwest and the family could only bring a couple of dogs- both Labradors.

Richard continued training and practicing for fun with his Labradors after the family settled in a Chicago suburb and only competed at a couple of field trials, Judie recalls. A few years later, a huge New Year’s Eve snowstorm and two broken snowblowers resulted in the family’s move to Arizona in search of warmer weather and a return to competing at some field trials.

As a high school student, Judie found herself preoccupied with boys, school, and band, leaving little time for dogs and field trials. But her interest in training canines rekindled when her freshman college classmates at Arizona State University asked her to help train their flat-coated retrievers and Labradors.

Judie Niece

After college, but before Labradors became a fixture in her adult life, Judie and husband Tom Niece owned a yellow Lab-Irish setter named Rusty that loved to hunt doves and quail.

Rusty’s retrieving drive almost landed Tom a hefty fine from one game warden who accused him of far exceeding the limit for bagging doves. Fortuitously, a few angry hunters appeared on the scene and accused Tom of not controlling Rusty who had retrieved their birds! Tom was off the hook for a citation and fine!

Next came Brooke, an Irish setter that Tom bought as a Christmas present for his wife after he responded to a newspaper advertisement. The dog, Judie recalls, was very sweet but “dumber than a box of rocks.” Then Gus, a rescue Irish setter, came into their life.

Enter Holly, the couple’s daughter, who at age two, announced she wanted to become a veterinarian.

A few years later, Holly advised she wanted a golden retriever and did chores to earn money so she could buy her dream dog. She’d accumulated $60 when she noticed a newspaper ad for a golden retriever with a price tag of exactly $60! Judie knew the golden probably wouldn’t be show quality but she and Tom relented. Holly bought the pup that she named Sandy and trained her at obedience classes. But Holly lacked confidence as a nine-year-old to compete at AKC obedience trials, so Judie decided to compete with Sandy in novice obedience.

When Judie arrived with Sandy at their first obedience trial, she was aghast when she realized the ring was adjacent to tennis courts. Sandy loved to retrieve. Judie wondered if Sandy would stay by her side on the heel off-leash exercise or would try to retrieve a tennis ball.  Those thoughts made her even more nervous.

The kindly obedience judge noticed Judie’s extreme nervousness as she entered the ring. He instructed her to leave, take a deep breath, and re-enter the ring. She did and was amazed when Sandy stayed at her side and did her best heeling work thus far! Sandy qualified that day and subsequently earned her companion dog degree.

Since Sandy, Judie has shown Labradors in the breed ring and at hundreds of performance trials. She readily admits that she enjoys performance events much more than the conformation ring and has trained and handled several Labradors to obedience and other titles. One, in particular, is her heart dog, a rescue named Charlie, who is now nearing retirement after earning seventy AKC titles in a variety of performance sports: obedience, rally, agility, trick dog, scent work, dock diving, barn hunt, hunt tests, carting, drafting, flyball, and lure coursing. Charlie also qualified four times for and competed once in the national dock diving championship in Orlando, FL, and also qualified at two other national dock diving competitions. Judie says his favorite sports are flyball and dock diving.

Judie has already started training her newest chocolate Lab rescue, two-year-old Lucy, in agility and dock work. She knows she has her work cut out, in part, because Lucy lacks socialization and concentration skills. Judie also stays active as president of the Papago Labrador Retriever Club, a position that she’s held since 2011.

Holly Niece-Tuttle

Years ago, Judie noticed daughter Holly was drawn to the conformation ring at dog shows. “That’s what I want to do,” Holly advised. By then golden retriever Sandy had become Judie’s dog. Judie knew that Sandy was not conformation material.

Soon after, the Nieces visited Texas relatives who just happened to have a litter of chocolate Labradors. The family returned home with Holly’s new pup named Molly. Holly trained her and the pair attended conformation handling and obedience classes.

When the pup turned six months old, nine-year-old Holly showed her at the duo’s first AKC conformation show. She couldn’t compete in junior handling classes because she didn’t meet the then class age requirement of ten.

Mother and daughter recall that competing in the conformation ring was a good teaching experience. At an early age, Holly learned how to compete with her dog in the ring against adults handling their Labradors. Both Holly and her mother say that she (Holly) gained confidence and matured socially faster than most youngsters her age. Although Holly trained and showed Molly to her companion dog obedience degree, she still prefers the conformation ring.

Judie recalls that the late Bonnie DeMille, a professional handler from Las Vegas, NV, took Holly under her wing and taught her much about showing dogs.  At one show, DeMille couldn’t show one of her clients’ dogs because she had a conflict in another ring. She told her clients, Keith and Maureen Lowrey, that Holly could show their dog, Chardy (Kimbros Barrel Select Chardonnay). The couple’s skepticism vanished when Holly showed him to reserve winners dog! Thereafter, Holly became Chardy’s exclusive handler and showed him to his conformation championship.

As Holly’s reputation as a skilled handler spread, friends began asking the youngster to show their dogs in the conformation ring, proud mother Judie recalls. That meant that Holly often spent at least three weekends a month, year-round, showing dogs in California and Oregon as well as Arizona.

Sometimes, Holly, with her grandmother and mother, accompanied their friend/Labrador breeder/exhibitor Terry McFadden in the latter’s RV to shows. Other times, Holly flew alone to various west coast shows and spent many weekends with the Lowreys, who accompanied her to many shows. She even had her own room at the Lowrey’s Santa Barbara, CA home.

The teenager also wanted to compete in the junior showmanship classes where youngsters’ handling skills are judged instead of a dog’s conformation. But the AKC requires that juniors or their family either own or co-own, the dog that the junior handles. That’s why the Lowreys made Holly a co-owner of Chardy- so she could show him in junior handling.

By then, Holly also showed a good looking black Labrador named  Teton (Ch. Chelon’s Teton of Red Rock) in the conformation ring for his owners, Barb and Bob Saurin of Red Rock Labradors in Mesa, AZ. They also had made Holly a co-owner of Teton, so she also showed him in junior handling. However, most of the time, Holly competed with Teton in the Best of Breed ring and showed Chardy and a golden retriever named William (Granhills Born to Conquer) in junior handling. William was given to Holly by Marjorie Blake of Bakersfield, CA. for helping her at shows and as she downsized the number of her golden retrievers.

In 1996, Holly won ten junior handling open classes as well as one best junior handler award. That qualified her to compete in the February 1997 junior handling competition at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog show in New York. Fourteen-year-old Holly wanted to show Chardy because the dog loved the show ring but the Lowreys didn’t want the canine to fly.

However, the Saurins agreed to fly Teton to New York, so Holly’s grandmother, Judie, and McFadden, also flew east. Not to be left behind, the Saurins also traveled to the Big Apple to watch Holly show Teton in the Labrador Best of Breed competition and junior handling. Although she didn’t win either class, Holly still fondly remembers her Westminster experience.

When she wasn’t showing dogs, Holly studied hard, swam competitively, and twice earned her high school’s scholar athlete award. She was determined to become a veterinarian, and her parents required her to maintain good grades as a condition of allowing her to show dogs on weekends. That motivated her to maintain a straight-A average in secondary school. At age sixteen, she started working at boarding kennels, then taught conformation handling classes, and became a vet tech.

Holly’s determination and hard work paid off. She earned a full scholarship to attend Arizona State University where she majored in biology and received a couple of $500 scholarships from the AKC.  She graduated in three and a half years, summa cum laude.

In 2004, Holly was accepted by two veterinary schools — Colorado State University (CSU) and Washington State University. She chose CSU because she thought her husband, Billy Tuttle, would have a better chance of finding employment as a teacher in Ft. Collins, CO than in Pullman, WA which is in the extreme southeast corner of the state. At CSU, she’d only be required to pay in-state tuition because she’d been accepted into the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) program. That selective award, which gave her the in-state (CO) tuition break, required her to return to Arizona after graduation and work there for four years.

Her high grades and participation at dog shows also paid off. She received three AKC scholarships, totaling $20,000, including the prestigious President’s award of $10,000.

In Colorado, Holly managed to show a few dogs but had little time to do so because of the demands of vet school. She now works at the Kennel Care Veterinary Hospital in Chandler, AZ, a small animal practice that specializes in canine reproduction issues. She finds that she can speak the language of show dog owners and hopes to become more involved with that part of the practice.

What did she learn showing dogs? Holly says showing in the breed ring against adult handlers made her mature more quickly than her contemporaries and instilled confidence in her. She adds that she learned responsibility by knowing she had to train and groom the dogs that she showed. And competing with dogs, taught her sportsmanship to graciously accept defeat and wins. Holly, who is an AKC provisional junior showmanship judge, believes that junior handling teaches much to youngsters.

Brooke and Bridget

This modest overachiever isn’t confident that her daughters, Brooke age nine, and Bridget just seven, will develop her enthusiasm for showing dogs. She notes that both enjoy showing— Brooke now in junior showmanship and Bridget in the pee wee class— but she doesn’t see the level of enthusiasm and commitment to train and show that she had at an early age. She’s letting her daughters decide how much involvement they want with dogs and shows but knows they enjoy trips to shows. The entire family, including Holly’s husband Billy, travels to shows with their camping trailer. That way the family can spend some time at the shows and lots of time enjoying “camping” activities.

Holly wonders if her daughters will become more interested and involved in the dog fancy when the family’s chocolate Labrador, Izzy whelps her first litter. Or will gymnastics win out with Bridget and swimming and horseback riding with Brooke? Only time will tell!

But Holly knows for certain that her grandmother helped instill a deep love for animals and her life’s work. Both she says, are “deep in my roots and genes.”

 

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