Thanks for stopping in and taking a moment to learn more about JC Pioneer Poodles.

JC Pioneer is a team effort, consisting of partners Julie Rossi and Sara Gessner.  Listed below is a brief history of our beginnings.  We (Julie and Sara) met in the 1990s, where we had been working together as groomers at a pet-care facility that Julie owned and operated in Belfast, Penn.  We soon discovered that we shared a passion for poodles.  It was then that we combined our efforts and became JC Pioneer Poodles.  We chose to work with a rather difficult color for the times, when we began our breeding program for silvers.  Our first show dog was Bridgett, and, for me (Sara), my first standard poodle.

We dedicated ourselves to learning the many grooming and ring procedures that made up the world of showing dogs.  We worked hard to learn all we could from the show experience and the knowledgeable people who attended.  We were very fortunate to find great friends in Alan Waterman and Elaine Jones, who both had superior knowledge and patience in mentoring us into the world of show dogs.  After several years of showing, we finally took the plunge and produced our first litter as a team.  Not quite knowing what to do about our two different kennel names, some of our first litters carry both kennel names, Julie’s being JC Boutime and Sara’s being Pioneer.  Finally, we decided to merge the two names and became simply JC Pioneer.  We have been asked many times what does the JC stand for, so to give JC his dues, I thought it would be nice to tell his story, too.  JC stands for John C., Julie’s husband, who bought her first standard poodle, Jolletts Yaba Daba Do.

Sadly John passed at far too young of an age, but, to honor him, all of our dogs carry his initials.  When we started this venture years ago, we realized rather quickly that there was much more to breeding dogs than their color.  The challenge of producing poodles that had sound structure, good health, and sound minds was met straight on and has now become our soul’s passion!  Color is fun but not our only goal.  Well-planned breedings, between parents with completed health screenings, who have also proven themselves in both AKC and UKC conformation rings, had to be our first goal for any success to be worthwhile.  We accepted the fact that this is, and continues to be, the ultimate goal of the journey.  Why parti coloring?  Why choose to buck the system and breed for a color that the Poodle Club of America (PCA) has determined to be a disqualification?  A pretty simple answer comes to mind.  If you look into the history of the poodle you will find this color at its core and, therefore, a naturally occurring part of the original poodle gene pool.  It was decided by some to breed away from this color; however, for us here at Pioneer, we feel a poodle is a poodle no matter what coat color.  And because we find their unique coloring to our liking, we decided to try and revive the quality and beauty of this colorful companion.  We started with a good foundation bitch from a very consistent, type-producing line and brought into the package the parti genes.  We knew this would be an every-other-generation process for a while, meaning it would take us longer to produce our partis, but we were determined to produce dogs of which we could be proud.  The first litter produced our gene carrier who, in turn, was bred to a parti, and that litter was our first parti litter.

This litter gave us several beautiful girls, and instead of looking for another parti, we bred back into the solid lines looking again to strengthen the structure and the look that we wanted to produce versus just producing more parti-colored puppies.   As breeders, we felt strongly about the importance of exhibiting what we had bred.  We welcomed having them compared and judged against other dogs.  This gave us the opportunity to see other dogs and develop our own eye and interpretation of structure and movement.  We had many sincere compliments on the dogs we were showing, but we soon received the cold shoulder by a few people when they discovered our breeding program included the parti color.  First of all, we had chosen a notoriously difficult color to compete with in the AKC venue and then added the parti factor to that equation.  We quickly became known as “those girls who breed the partis.”  We were constantly told, “It can't be done.”  Nevertheless, through sheer determination and unwavering commitment we continued, and, now, all of our hard work is starting to pay off:

• We finished our first AKC/CAN Champion, our beautiful boy, Joker.

• We bred our silver and white parti girl Diva to a boy we had produced from one of our previous solid breedings, and this litter gave us our second AKC/CAN Champion, Ozzy.

• Ozzy's sister, Duchess, started showing at over four years of age and is now also a finished Champion.

• Kaiser (littermate to Ozzy and Duchess) was sold to our handlers, Alan Waterman and Jerome Cushman.  Kaiser has made us extremely proud with such prestigious wins to his credit as Awards of Merit at both Westminster and the Eukanuba Invitational.  He has received two invitations to the renowned Crufts Show in England and was ranked the #1 Poodle in 2004, as well as taking the variety at the Poodle Nationals (the first silver in the history of the breed to do so).

And they said it couldn't be done?

In conclusion, through staunch determination to see our visions of the restoration of the parti-colored poodle to its proper place of honor, we have determined that slow and steady wins the race.  If you would like a sound dog, both in body and mind, you will find that good things come to those that wait.
 

The Gang at Pioneer