Members of: Utah Collie
Club
Collie Club of America
Intermountain Kennel Club, Inc.
My wife
Debbie and I started in Collies in 1970. We purchased a rough
collie male from a breeder that was going through a divorce and
needed to reduce the number of dogs they had. He was pure Parader
breeding and had his CD. He was the best baby sitter we ever
had. Tory was never shown by us but made up for it at home by
raising our oldest son, Jeff. We were introduced to the show
world through Tory.
I wanted a show dog in the worst way. The only way I could come
up with the money was to sell my 1955 Chevrolet 2-door hardtop
that I dearly loved. We purchased our first "show dog"
with this money but he turned out to be a pet. We went thru quite
a few dogs before we purchased a Ch. WindCall Nighthunter daughter
from Haydee Battney Kuner in Colorado. We co-owned her with Christene
Nehrer and later bred her to Al and Helene Forthal's Ch. Shane
McDuff of Koani. This started a lifelong friendship with the
Forthal's and gave us our first champion. In the 70's we bred
a couple of champions and many point winners. We purchased a
bitch from Dale Peterson who we sent to the National in 1981
and like her mother, came home RWB. At this time PRA was everywhere
and we were right in the middle of it. We had four kids and so
we decided to forego the showing and breeding and just enjoy
the dogs and raise our kids.
(To view our early years, click above)
I have
been President of the Utah Collie Club for nine years and have
been Show Chairman since 1996. Debbie has held many office's
in the club also. I'm also President of the Intermountain Kennel
Club and Debbie is the Treasurer. I've served as Show Chairman
for IKC and as the Cluster Chairman for the Utah Beehive Cluster
held in May. Debbie has served as the CCA District Director for
Utah for the last two years. I served as the First Vice President
of the CCA from 2002 to 2004. I currently serve on the CCA Ethics
Committee and I'm Chairman
of the Code of Ethics Revision Committee.
Welcome
to our website. We hope you enjoy the pictures of some of the
dogs we
have bred and been lucky to own. There are a lot of photo's so
some
pages may take longer to load. Please be patient.
This site best viewed with IE6 or
Netscape 7.1; display at 1024 X 768.
Webdesign by Trudy Roundy.
Site created 5/6/2004.
Copyright; 2004 Cobblecreek Collies
No part of this site my be copied, including photographs, without
written permission from Mike
& Debbie Van Tassell.
