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Pine Shadows, Inc
14752 Three Mile Rd
Brainerd, MN 56401
218.829.4736
English Springer Spaniels
Professional Handling
Gun Dog Training
Quality Pet Care
Pheasant Hunts
Field Trials
1976 est.
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Pine Shadows Press
From the Brainerd Daily Dispatch, Saturday, September 18, 2004
Training the dog trainer
By VINCE MEYER
Outdoors Editor
As a boy his life appeared to be going to the dogs, but Morgan Haglin's parents did
nothing to stop it. Rather, Mark and Sophie Haglin hoped it would happen.
The Haglins started Pine Shadows Kennels in 1976. Like most people who
operate a family business, they want one day to turn the business over to one
of their children. But the Haglin's first two boys, Travis and Grant, went on
to other pursuits. Then came Morgan, who, as can be seen in the photo on this
page taken when ye was a youngster, always loved dogs. That interest hasn't
waned. Today he's helped train more than 200 dogs and is on course to one day
become owner-operator of Pine Shadows Kennels.
Like his brothers, Morgan grew up helping around the kennel,
which specializes in Springer spaniels. He cleaned pens, helped with dog
training and learned to shoot when he was 6. As a boy he was given a dog to
call his own and named him Roper. He loved the pup, but one day came home
from school to find his parents had sold it.
An early lesson in dog breeding was learned: don't get too attached to any
one dog.
Like his brothers, Morgan was given freedom to find his own calling. While in
high school he worked at the Garrison Animal Hospital and thought about
becoming a veterinarian. At the University of Minnesota he majored in
animal science, but after four years of city life he realized his heart was
in the north country.
"That was a turning point," Morgan recalls. "I knew I wanted
to train hunting dogs."
Morgan wonders if he would have become a dog trainer if he hadn't grown up
around a kennel.
"I talked to a guy this summer who's a financial adviser," Morgan
said. "He invests money for people who win the lottery. He told me, 'I
didn't know there was a job like this out there.' That got me thinking. How would
I have known there was a job like this out there?"
Pine Shadows' many satisfied customers attest to Morgan's
skill as a dog handler and trainer.
"It's a summer process, a two-year process," Morgan said of
training a pup. "To get it to quarter back and forth, flush a bird, sit
down, watch it fly away, hold a mark, leave on command to get that mark --
that might take two-and-a-half years. Then to get the dog to stop out there
and go left and right on a hand signal, that might take three or four years."
Two weeks are needed for Morgan to determine how much he can get from a dog.
But dog owners often aren't that patient.
"One guy brought his dog here and said he could leave it for just a
week," Morgan said. "In that one week he wanted me to introduce it
to birds, work on pointing, get it used to a gun and range control.
"Well, the first day it got to know me and that was all we accomplished.
The second day we had a couple of birds and he liked that, but wasn't
interested in pointing. By the third day he could hold a point. On the fourth
day we started shooting around him, which is a bit quick. But that's all the
time we had."
In
addition to training at Pine Shadows, Morgan also takes dogs to field trials
each year. But come fall the kennel and a field trials take second place to
hunting.
"You can't really train during hunting season," Morgan said.
"You gotta hunt. That's what's nice about this. I can go hunting when I
want to."
VINCE MEYER can be reached at vince.meyer@brainerddispatch.com or (218) 855-5862.
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