February 6, 2017

The Story Behind GameKeeper Kennels

How a Dog Named Jake Helped Birth Mossy Oak’s GameKeeper Kennels

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Mossy Oak wants people to be able to live their best lives outdoors. We believe that one of the best ways to achieve that goal is to have a great field companion. We want to be able to touch people’s lives with high quality dogs. Mossy Oak feels that the relationship between the hunter and the dog is as big a part of being outdoors as hunting is. So, Mossy Oak wants to make available for our consumers in the Mossy Oak family what we feel are the best breeds of dogs with the best training and have the best products available for these dogs.

GKK_day1 Over the years, many in Mossy Oak have had Labrador retrievers, but the founder of our company, Toxey Haas, had a very special British Lab named Jake. An unbelievable hunter with a great disposition, Jake was a highly trained Lab. So, we decided to breed Jake with one of our executives, Chris Hawley’s, dog named Abby. Four years ago we bred these two dogs for the first litter of Mossy Oak British Labrador retrievers. Not long after the breeding, Jake had an accident and passed away. But we still had a litter of Jake’s pups, and that’s how Mossy Oak’s GameKeeper Kennels got started.

We wanted to preserve Jake’s bloodline, his hunting ability and his personality. Toxey Haas’s neighbor, Bill Gibson, a retired law enforcement officer, had a passion for training British Labs and had spent more than a decade using the dog-training techniques he’d learned in the United Kingdom. Mossy Oak talked to Bill, and he agreed to take on the mission of building Mossy Oak’s GameKeeper Kennels, breeding British Labs and training them. Bill is now the Director of Gun Dog Operations here at Mossy Oak, headquartered on 12 acres just south of West Point, Mississippi. We converted that property into a British Labrador retriever breeding and training facility.

To learn more about Mossy Oak’s GameKeeper Kennels, the dogs and the trainer, go to www.mossyoakkennels.com.

Why Raise and Work with British Labrador Retrievers for Hunting Dogs

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