About Us
My name is Monica MacDonald,
and I am the owner of Mudd Hollow Labs. We have three boys who are loved
and raised by our three dogs, Polly and Gunner who are labs, and Token our one
and only token Great Dane, aka house horse.
We got our first lab
puppy in 2003. Cajun was of pet breeding. We'd not had a dog for a
couple years, and having grown up with a dog always in the house, it felt like
our house was missing something. We ran onto the ad for Cajun, and brought
her home that afternoon. She was a lanky, light boned dog, who taught us a
great deal about obedience. Shortly after that, in investigating about
labs, I saw my first show dogs. These dogs were a far cry from the puppy I
had at my feet, but I felt like I would like to show, and started the search for
a puppy.
In 2004, we got
two puppies. Our first puppy, Heatherwood's His Name is Mudd, was a
chocolate dog. Within a few weeks our other puppy, Beulahland's Muddy Paw,
arrived at our house. I was naive and did not realize two puppies would be
such a huge handful. I loved these dogs, but learned a valuable lesson
with them. Even so much more experienced, I would be hesitant to take two
puppies that young on at the same time.
When the puppies were eight
months old, we went to the Las Vegas shows. We were so excited and made it
a family event. It was only our second set of shows, and both dogs had
done well in the puppy classes at our first show, Arizona's Fiesta
Cluster. The morning of the first day, we packed up our pick up while the
dogs ran around me for their morning potty break. Mudd, in his enthusiasm,
flung himself into the back of the pick up. Having never been allowed to
even jump on a bed, he was not good at it, and missed, slamming his midsection
into the tail gate. He ruptured his bladder, and we made an emergency run
back home. Mudd never saw the Vegas show ring.
After a very expensive surgery, Mudd was repaired.
He came home and healed, and shortly thereafter we moved to our little farm
north of Salt Lake, in the city of Woods Cross. A year later, we were
considering breeding him to Polly, and took him into the vet to be sure that he
was capable of producing semen after his accident. An ultrasound showed a
giant kidney, which was near rupture. It had blocked up from his accident,
and evidently had spent the year slowly growing in size. A few days before
his scheduled surgery, Polly and Mudd escaped. Polly came home at 3 a.m.
and Mudd did not. We found him that next morning on the side of the
road. It is unknown if he was hit by a car, or that the kidney had just
ruptured. He did not have a mark on him. It was heartbreaking
to have lost him after we fought so hard to keep him.
Mudd
Hollow Labs, was originally called Muddy Paw Labs. The loss of Mudd broke
our heart and we withdrew from dogs for a couple years. When we returned
in the fall of 2007, we renamed our kennel Mudd Hollow, in honor of the dog we
lost, and the hollow spot left which never will totally be filled, but that in
spite of the pain life does go on.
2008 has started off to be an
exciting year. We have our first breeding ever to the best dog we could
possibly find, and we had the addition of Avalon's Just Gunner. Gunner was
sold as a show prospect to a woman north of me. She was unable to find the
time or money to show him, and due to her changing family situation, he spent a
year kenneled. She chose to sell all her dogs, and I stumbled across his
ad. He was an exceptionally beautiful lab, bred to the teeth with few non
Can/Am champions in his five generation pedigree. We picked him up
the next day and he's seamlessly blended into our family with a personality that
reminds me of my lost Mudders. He will make his show debut at the age of
four years old this spring and we expect him to easily finish.
We also, this spring, have moved our
final time to our new house in North Salt Lake. This house is truly a
dream house for me, having all the things I've wanted in a house. It sits
high in the benches of the Wasatch Mountains, and you can see eighty miles from
our vantage point. It seems fitting that the first spring at our new house
would find us with new life. ::: Made with CoffeeCup :
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