Avery Creek Retrievers

06/25/2024

06/18/2024

Awning is out, canopy is up, the Allman Brothers on the radio, and a delayed land/water triple with a 186 yard blind. It’s hot, but it sure beats sitting in an office in front of a computer.

06/13/2024

One of these things is not like the others.

06/12/2024

So they will have a pretty cool “what I did this summer” the first day of school next fall. Raising baby mallards.

06/11/2024

Kind of a chilly start for mid June. I hope this trend sticks around.

06/07/2024

This morning view just never gets old.

05/24/2024

When you are taking 12 dogs to an OFA Eye Clinic for clearances on Saturday morning, you take the trailer to Tractor Supply on Friday evening and give baths.
One more reason I can’t wait for our kennel to be completed and we will have our own wash station.

05/24/2024

We have a slab.

05/23/2024

Progress being made, individual
kennel drain lines and clean outs installed; finished that up last night. This morning the concrete guys were back and put the rebar in the footings, laid a v***r barrier and got the wire set. Inspector was good with everything so now we are ready to put concrete down.

05/22/2024

It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Everyone always speculates in discussions about how long or how old a dog should be to certsin levels depending on the dog. So I asked UKC for the information and thought I would share. I was surprised by some more than others. Looking at the AKC info on Retriever Results web page shows I believe most of the corresponding levels to a little later age on average.

05/21/2024

Man it has been a bumpy road to get to this point. I won’t go into all the details, but it was finally dry enough to dig footings and start forming for our new kennel. Hopefully the pad for the building will be poured Friday and then we will get the parking area done. For a time it felt like this day wasn’t meant to be, but it is exciting to see things finally starting to move.

05/12/2024

I’ve seen this making the rounds the last few days. It’s a valid for dog as it is horses.

The problem with horse training is that society is set up to believe that you can buy a service and have things the way you want in a certain time frame. People look at horse training as if they're spending their money on a product. And yet even the best horse trainers will tell you the horse takes its own time, and no one can guarantee a horse will be doing what you want from it when you want from it.

The other problem is that even if your trainer can get it done with your horse, it doesn't necessarily mean that you will be able to. Getting a horse right takes an amount of commitment on the owners part to develop the same type of relationship that the trainer has, otherwise how can you expect from your horse for yourself what your trainer gets, when it's they who have put in the hours, the and sweat, the patience and the desire to get along with that horse? You aren't spending money on a tune up for your car that you can take home and drive.

The fact that money is involved leads people to believe they deserve something for what they paid, and they do, but, it happens in the animals time, not the humans. I think any good trainer would say they would do this for free if they could, just to help horses and people. And yet, we all have to eat...

Ty Cornelius
870.291.0962

05/09/2024

I don’t get to spend near as much time with these three as I’d like; being on the road most weekends, hauling dogs around and chasing ribbons, I miss a lot of stuff with them. With school be cancelled today due to the widespread power outages from the storms yesterday evening and overnight, I headed out this morning to start the day. As I was getting rained on I decided I needed to take the kids to shop for Mother’s Day. We went and picked up a couple things for Nicole and then decided we would go eat lunch. I can’t begin to say how much fun I had spending part of the day just hanging out and having lunch. We laughed, we talked and we enjoyed some time together. Yeah, I probably should have been throwing marks in the rain, but I don’t get the chance often to have these three with me all at the same time, so we took a nasty, rainy morning and made it into a great time together.

05/06/2024

Time to head home.

05/03/2024

Field Day at Laney and Riley’s elementary school. Parents were invited to the morning team competitions. We volunteered to bring a canopy for the kids to sit under; I think their class canopy stands out a littlle

04/10/2024

We had a dog slice his foot open, last Thursday during our monthly vet check up day Dr. Terra had to put a few stitches in it, today she came by to check on his stitches and give him a phovia fluorescent light treatment. Everything seems to be healing up nicely, but it’s pretty awesome that we can get this kind of treatment and do it without leaving the kennel. DocTerra Mobile Veterinary Services, PLLC does a tremendous job in keeping our dogs healthy and helping them recover as quickly as possible. First time I have seen a phovia flourescent treatment, I have seen laser therapy done before, but this phovia deal was pretty cool.

04/06/2024

Very proud of the work and dedication over the past number of years. Today, Jed earned his black belt in karate. He is now Sensei Mosley. A huge thanks to Jimmy Newton at Newton's Karate for all he has done to help Jed grow and the discipline has had taught him. It was fun to think back of when he first started as a white belt and to watch him today and how far he has come and how much he has grown. Nicole and I are so proud he took the challenge and saw it all the way through to this milestone. Hearing his named called today makes all the years of getting him to class and picking him up 3 nights a week worth the effort. Congratulations to everyone who tested and earned an advancement today, these young men and women and adults give a significant amount of time to better themselves at their art; that effort was celebrated today watching them earn higher ranks. Sensei Newton and I had a text conversation a week or so ago and I told him how much we were looking forward to today, he text back and said April 6 will be a great day, he was telling the truth, it was a great day for sure.

03/25/2024

Our newest Hunting Retriever Champion, introducing HRCH Woodbridge’s Mississippi Girl “Waylynne”. Congratulations to Benjamin Farris and Leanna Smith Farris

03/05/2024

Boone running a down the shore blind this morning, in the shadows

02/29/2024

Too pretty of a day to be on the trailer. Thanks to CABLE GANGZ they are getting to enjoy the nice day and watch each other work.

02/26/2024

And so it begins. Pretty exciting day, the new kennel is officially started.

02/17/2024

I don’t like to air dirty laundry in public, but maybe this will save someone the headache and frustration in the future. This is an actual e-mail from a company (Vevor) about issuing me a nearly $1000 refund for an item (stainless steel grooming tub) that never arrived. They don’t want to refund my card, they want to PayPal me and if I don’t have a PayPal account they want me to use a friend’s account to get my refund. I have never dealt with anything as unprofessional and sketchy as Vevor. Not to mention their Chinese to English translation program is horrible. I’m guessing I’ll never see my money because the phone number just takes you to a call center and all they say is they will make a note on the account.

This has been going on for over a week now, always a reason they can’t issue refund.

Edited to add: I called the bank and they have no record of an attempted refund. I was told to talk with our local branch manager Tuesday.

02/13/2024

24 boxes of these showed up today. 600 dental chews. The dogs love these things.

01/25/2024

An update on Josey.

So I’ve had a couple days to process things and do some research; fortunately heart disease is something we have never had to deal with before.

One of the many reasons we feed Purina Pro Plan is the research they do on the formulas they sell. I had no idea they had a formula specifically designed for dogs with heart disease, Pro Plan CC CardioCare. Today our Purina rep reached out and recommended we switch her off of the Sport 30/20 and go to the CardioCare. They did a study showing how a specific diet can slow down the progression of heart enlargement. They also have an e-book I downloaded from the Purina Institute website, “Canine and Feline Clinical Nutrition A Reference Guide to Nutritional Management of Clinical Conditions in Dogs and Cats”.

I haven’t had the time to read through the entire guide yet, but I did look over the sections that address Josey’s condition, and have a much better understanding of what it is and what the progression will look like.

I appreciate very much Kelsi Toth reaching out today on behalf of Purina, she was even willing to get me in touch with one of the vets at Purina to answer any specific questions I may have. This is just another reason we will feed and recommend Purina Pro Plan.

Our monthly vet visits from DocTerra Mobile Veterinary Services, PLLC will play a huge roll in monitoring her, we are so grateful for the work and care Dr. Terra puts in with all of the dogs here each month, without her we may not have known she has a murmur and we sure wouldn’t have had an echo done. I have had a lot of people say it’s overkill and a waste of money to have dogs checked by a vet every month, but this is one of several examples I can give as to why we do it.

So hopefully with meds and a diet change we can hold the inevitable off a good while and she can keep working, albeit on a somewhat reduced level, and who knows she may even make an appearance at some more tests.

01/24/2024

So Josey and I made trip to Charlotte for an echocardiogram.

In December, during our monthly vet check-ups, Dr. Terra noted a grade 1 heart murmur. We didn’t worry too much at that time, but she made note of it. Fast forward to early this month (January) it had progressed to a Grade 4 murmur. At that time we decided to schedule an echo and see what was going on.

The cardiologist informed me today that she has a degenerative heart disease. Basically the flap between her left atrium and left ventricle doesn’t work properly and allows blood to back flow into the atrium. What happens then is the atrium will expand to make room for the additional blood, thus causing an enlarged heart and lead to congestive heart failure.

There is a treatment, a surgery that is only done at The University of Florida, but it’s a $30,000 surgery. We were prescribed Pimobendan, which if it works, should slow down the degeneration, but we have no idea how much it will slow it down if at all.

I was told that I would have to drastically decrease her activity level as far as training and competing, and that is where it gets tough for me.

How do I take away what she loves and was born to do? She will be miserable sitting in the kennel, or the house, watching dogs load up on the trailer to go to work everyday.

I’ll have to have some more conversations with people much smarter than me, but in a way I feel as long as she can go, let her go like hell until she can’t. Let her enjoy what time we have left together. I’m not sure taking away what she lives to do to extend her life a few months or a year is fair to her.

I don’t know, it’s a lot to process, but I want to thank everyone that has text or called or prayed the last few days for Josey, it’s unreal how much these dogs come to mean to us. I guess we will take a few days, have a few conversations and decide what we feel is best for her.