Dry Creek Basin

Shortcuts

• Address
• Telephone
• Alerts
• Contact The Business
• Claim ownership or report listing
• 

  Want your business to be the top-listed Pet Store/pet Service in Redvale?

How we got started

Dan Koon and his family moved from CA about 1966, when his dad, Bill Koon, became fed up with the hippy culture of the time. They purchased the Basin Store, which became a very popular gathering place for hunters, oil workers, and anyone traveling up or down Route 141. Dan, his father and his grandfather also outfitted on North Mountain, eventually controlling over 30,000 acres and assisting hunters in bringing down record-setting mule deer and elk. Dan and his father also bred the Pony of the Americans - a smaller Appaloosa cross which became a very desirable working and show horse in the area. Dan was also 5th in the United States in showing a gorgeous little stallion. Dan was a taxidermist for roughly 20 years, doing beautiful mounts for hunters all over the US.

After becoming a father to two boys, Justis and Radigan, Dan’s marriage ended; he then met Lane Conrad, a New Hampshire native who had moved west in 1988. They met through a singles’ ad - and began a romance between Whitefish, Montana, and Dry Creek Basin, 18 hours south. At that time, they determined that they would breed a rare dog breed, the Bracco Italiano, and do their best to keep this 2000-year-old breed as unspoiled in the US as possible; Dan having watched the Rottweiler go from a calm, non-aggressive working breed to an unpredictable attack breed - all due, we believe, to its popularity in the US. Since then, they have become the longest-running and most popular breeder in the US, producing marvelously classy family hunting companions. Lane and Dan are also long-time dog trainers and behaviorists, running a no-cage in-their-home dog boarding business as well.

At the age of 8 or 9 years old, Dan started breeding goats and milked them, and moved into the rare Barbados sheep and also Russian boar pigs, when he brought home two from a Texas pig-hunting trip. There were always bottle babies and baby pigs raised in the house. Dan’s interest in sheep has recently changed to horned sheep, and we are now breeding “Desert Dragon sheep, which are a colored and 4-horn breed.

Dan has always had an artistic side to him, and he and Radigan started Dry Creek Craftsmen, which creates hand-forged knives, leatherwork and refurbishing of antique straight razors.