Downs Lake Kennel

I want to take this opportunity to thank all of my puppy buyers for their years of committment of love to the raising and training of my beloved offspring.  After weeks of caring for these wonderful new lives, it is extremely hard to let them go, but I am very pleased with all of the new homes my puppies have found and I have great faith that each one of you will love and care for them as I do. 

Please contact me with updates to their progress.  I love to receive pictures as they grow and change and enjoy hearing of all the great things they are more than capable of  learning. 

Keep in mind that these dogs were bred for their intelligence, loyalty, gentleness and temperment.  They are capable of learning anything you can think up for them to do.  They are much more than pets.  Because of their love, they can be your greatest companion and asset.  I know you will find the English Springer Spaniel to be the best breed you will ever own.

You are the reason to look forward to my next batch of puppies.

Thanks Again!!!

Bev

I received some very nice letters from my puppy buyers.  They have allowed me to add them to this page.  It's alway nice when you are appreciated for your efforts.  Please feel free to comment about my website or your experience with your dogs or your Springer that you purchased from me here.  I would love to hear from all of you!

Hi Bev,

I am so enjoying your little boy or, not so little as he is growing 
fast!
He is so healthy!  His coat is extraordinarily beautiful with great
markings.  I love his spots.  My older shelter dog (shepherd/healer mix)
"Danny Boy" and "Cruiser" are getting along famously and play 
incessantly.
Danny is very patient with Cruiser (I have named him "Cruiser" instead 
of
"Squad Car".)  He is incredibly smart and learns tricks unbelievably 
fast.
I attribute this to your great breeding and handling the pups very 
early.
Danny has been a great influence as he has imprinted Cruiser with
territorial boundaries.  This is a great relief to me as I hope not to 
have
to install a dog run. Neither Danny nor Snickers needed a fence 
boundary.

Thanks for your fine breeding!

Best.  Rebecca Lockwood

Hi Bev,

Sure, you may post our Jessie update and pictures; she does have a 
beautiful (and expressive) tail, although it needed a good brushing after all her 
snow play! Please do not include our email address and edit out any other 
parts of my message as you see fit. I would love to see other springer owners 
opt to leave their puppies' tails fully intact. 

If anyone asks, you can tell them we have never regretted selecting 
Jessie from newborn photos after my phone conversations with you and the 
Spokane vet, and the information on your website about her parents. As I'm sure 
you can imagine, it was a scary leap of faith to choose a puppy before 
seeing her personality and whether she appeared healthy. Once we get a dog, it
doesn't matter what kind of problems it has, it's part of our family, so 
the chances we would have ever wanted to return a puppy once we had it were 
slim to none. And we have definitely never regretted her tail; nothing like
following her happy "windmill-wagging" tail down a trail - I break into 
a smile just thinking about it!

Do take care,

Harriet

Hi Bev,

Haven't emailed you for quite a while and wanted to let you know that 
Jessie (and Suzie and Lynn and I) is doing just fine. We hope this finds you 
and Rachel well too. Jessie is such a delightfully happy and spunky addition 
to our family. As you know, she is a year old now, and is just incredibly
strong and healthy. She absolutely loves water, in any form!

We spent the long Martin Luther King holiday weekend skate skiing the 
cross country trails in the Methow Valley, WA. Four couples and four dogs 
shared a house; enough to say we all had a great time. These photos were taken 
that weekend. Jessie found lots of sticks to chew and had a whole pack to 
play with; she was sure she was at Disneyland. She got to run along with the
skiers on the doggie-friendly trails and was absolutely ecstatic. One 
happy little girl!

Thanks again for our beautiful little puppy.

Harriet

From:   Kristin Loomis <kristinloomis62@hotmail.com> To:   <springer1712@netscape.com> Subject:   Elroy update Date:   Fri 09/26/08 04:59 PM

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Hi Bev,

Elroy has been doing much better. After our emails and some research I 
went to the pet store and purchased a Halti (gentle lead) this way he 
stops trying to pull me.  And I also got some yummy liver treats just 
for our walks.
Today on our walk Elroy met two other big and beautiful springer 
spaniels and he was very pleased to meet them.  He and I stopped to 
visit with a older woman  he was very polite and later on our walk he 
visited with a really big man.   He did beautifully.  I praised him with 
love and a little goody.
He walked by a couple people riding bicycles and some road maintenance 
people.  when he tried  to bark I said his name  and told him to sit  
and Look at me  and then he was fine and we were able to move on without 
any trouble.  Wow He is smart!  I had full control the entire walk.  I 
hope i didn't cheat with the gentle lead.  But he did so much better 
with it .    People actually stopped to say hello to him... Can you 
believe that he let  people come near him.
He has learned a ton over the last few days.

I am so proud of my young man:)
Kristin Loomis

I’ll forward some recent photos of Jessie when I get a few minutes; enough to say she’s just beautiful and is a delight to be around. She and our faithful goldie, Suzie, are best of pals. The girls go everywhere with us and are good car (and boat) travelers. Lynn was working on the beach on the Key Peninsula Thursday, so I took the dogs and went for about a 5 mile walk along the beach at very low tide while he was working. It was a cobble shore with a high bank with overhanging vegetation and lots of drift logs. Between the starfish, sand dollars, crabs and an endless supply of sticks, Jessie thought she was in a perfect puppy playground. She’s also quite the little swimmer now. She loudly rings her door bells, heads straight for the pond for a swim, then returns dripping wet to come back in. She’s got it all figured out! We’re taking the girls with us on a road trip to Southern California in a few weeks and have lots of stops planned for adventures they will enjoy along the way.

Thank you again for such a beautiful little companion, she’s a perfect fit in our little “pack.” I hope all your other new parents are as pleased as we are.

One more thing, we have had no problem at all with her housebreaking; she hasn’t had an accident in probably a couple months at least; your early puppy bell training was wonderful.

I do have a question. When we took Jessie in for her last round of puppy shots, the vet said she should be spayed at 6 months, even though she would not have had her first heat yet. She said that in their experience, the chance of her coming down with breast cancer is greater if we wait until she’s had her first heat before spaying. I think you and I talked about waiting until after her first heat so she was less likely to develop urinary incontinence problems later on and so she would have fully developed her adult dog characteristics. Have you any further thoughts on this subject? Thanks so much,

Harriet

From: "Harriet and Lynn Goodwin" <goodwin@starband.net>
To: <springer1712@netscape.com>
Subject: Jessie's wonderful!
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 18:25:31 -0800

Just wanted you both to know we just dearly love our little Jessie, she’s smart as a whip and just a delight to be around. She went to the vet today for her puppy shots and is doing just fine! She got checked out and got a clean bill of health; strong heart, clear sharp eyes and absolutely beautiful. She weighs 8 lbs, 8.5 oz now. I had given her a worm pill after all the weekend visitors who came just to meet her left. It was a good thing! Thanks for the head’s up on that one! The vet said to give her two more doses.

Jessie loved all the attention at the airport terminal but didn’t think much of being in a carrier on the plane. She got “special notice” when the flight attendant was giving instructions on buckling seatbelts and all those good things. But she settled down as soon as I could put her whole carrier on my lap and slept the rest of the way. Lynn’s heart just melted when he met us at the car and saw her for the first time, they’ve been virtually inseparable ever since.  

Jessie and our 8 year old goldie, Suzie, play together a lot. Suzie wasn’t too sure about sharing the limelight at first but she’s really good natured and it didn’t take long before she adopted Jessie as a welcome member of her pack; she’s very careful with her new little sister. Jessie, on the other hand, loves to torment Suzie and eats her food every opportunity; Suzie just concedes the bowl until we see what’s going on and pick up Jessie. We’ve been going on pretty long walks (for such short little legs) nearly every day. It’s 1.2 miles down the hill to our mailbox and back. I carry Jessie when I think she needs a break and she invariably wiggles until I let her down to walk on her own again. We’ve been working with the leash on the mailbox walks and she is doing well. This morning we walked on a grass and dirt road behind our house so she didn’t have to be on leash. She loved it and did a great job of staying with her “pack,” or at least when there weren’t too many exciting new smells to check out. She’s been waking us twice a night on average to go outside, getting to be a routine. All the time you spent training her has really been a big help to us. It also helps that Jessie is quite fond of sausage!  

Thank you both so very, very much! Hope all the new parents of your other puppies are as happy as we are.  

Best of luck to you both,  

Harriet and Lynn  

Received on 12-13-07

          Cassie (Cassie-Mae) has been a delight to live with from the beginning.  She is so smart that we have to really be on our toes to keep ahead of her.  We have been taking her to puppy obedience class and she is the star student. She is also very athetic and we were thinking about a Utility class. We have several people walking her (neighbors) besides our daily walks and we take her to a dog park where she meets and plays with other puppies. She has become the "darling of the neighborhood"; everyone thinks she is so cute they can hardly keep their hands off of her.  She loves the sun in Arizona, but she's so adaptable and easy-going that we have no concern about taking her back to rainy Seattle for the summner.  In fact, she was a perfect traveller as a 10-week old puppy when we drove to Tucson in the Fall. Thanks Bev for all your careful breeding and hard work raising these pups.
 
                    Donna and Yvonne