Edward Jr

Edward, Age 3, feeding 'Baby Bear'

Alister Feeding Baby Bear

Edward Age 5 and a half, 2007

We are located 4.5 hours north of north Toronto from the Hwy 401 and Hwy 400 intersections.

Black Bear farm is not a farm. We have a small home at the end of a forest drive way. We are located a half km from the village of Killarney.

In spring, summer and fall, bears visit us almost every day. Killarney has one of the highest bear populations in the province and the bears cross our property regularly to visit the Killarney landfill site so we appropriated the name Black Bear Farm!

Some times, in late summer, there are between twenty and thirty bears, all together, just a half km from our home. We see a lot of bears as they cross the property going back and forth. They get to know us and we get to know some of them.We needed a dog that was off leash all the time to protect our other animals and our child. We wanted dogs that would stay around and not wander into town. In part, our breeding program was motivated by a need to train the bears to make a detour around our home. But, as you can see there were exceptions. Once we had to lend a helping hand to a small bear. The dogs even socialized with her once they learned that her visits were allowed. My son Edward named the little bear, 'Baby Bear' after his favorite storybook character.I grew up in the country. I moved to the city at age twenty, became a salesman for many years. Finally, I found a way to move back to the country with enough skills to make a modest living.We have a remote and simple home with the most basic of services but we are not quite off the grid! We have high speed Internet!

Dog breeding came to us by accident as I looked for ways to create a dog team. I had kept German Short Haired Pointers in the city. When I moved to the north, I found my first Lab / Weimaraner puppies and acquired them as hunting partners because they had thicker coats. One day I found a dog harness and tried it out on my male dog Avro, to see if he liked pulling me on skis. He did. I got another harness for Annie and tried it out on her. She liked pulling me on skis too. Together they could pull me at 30 KM per hour on the lake over the ice.The next obvious step was to find a dog sled. I did find one but the sled was too heavy for only two dogs. I needed more dogs. In the mean time, I learned that Weimaraners didn't roam. Labs do. So, I figured that if I crossed Annie with a Weimaraner, I might produce good recreational sled dogs, hunting partners and dogs that would not be inclined to wander off the property.

One day we bought Chief, a strong Weimaraner puppy of only six months. Annie and Avro pulled me on my skis the first winter. Chief, still a puppy, ran fast beside us but at twenty below, the moment he stopped running, I  had to wrap him in a blanket! The next winter I tried him out in harness. He figured out what to do in less than five minutes and pulled all winter. I still had to wrap him in a coat or blanket when we stopped. Chief became my best sled dog. Chief and Annie's puppies have created my dog team. Now I have six to eight in harness, summer and winter. In the summer, they pull just me - no sled. I run behind them over the ATV trails. With them pulling, I can go for miles and miles without tiring.I kept puppies with more Lab genes in their mix and offered the other puppies for sale to mostly Ontario and Toronto GTA customers.

We began to build up our Georgian Bay Sporting Dogs breeding program. I have acquired new Weimaraners to vary the blood lines. We have many photo galleries and video clips of our puppies and dogs and many letters from our customers from the past. We have video posted on YouTube. Recent letters are posted on our Blog together with news about expected future litters.Many of our puppies are purchased in advance of being born to insure sex and colour choices are available.