We have been involved with the Havanese breed for 8+ years now, but it seems like yesterday that we brought home our first Havanse puppy. My how things have changed! The breeder we purchased our first puppy from requested that we show her in AKC conformation. How hard can that be, we thought...surely we can walk a dog on a lead around a ring and we can probably even chew gum at the same time...grin. Well, we came to learn that there was a little more to it than that, but did put 2 points on our girl the first weekend Cherie went in the ring under Edd Bivin. Little did we know what that weekend would lead to in our lives with Havanese! We're honored to have bred some of the top winning Havanese and are equally honored to have bred some wonderful pets as well. Along the way, we've added many Havanese friends and often smile about our Tejano family!

At home, our Havanese are family members as well. You can learn more about our Havanese in the Our Dogs section of the website, but here we will give you a chance to meet the rest of our family "virtually". Hopefully we can meet you in person some day!

Let's start with our "real" jobs outside our hobby of showing dogs. Joel and Cherie are both involved in the information technology arena. Joel is IT project manager for a Fortune 500 international oil and gas services firm. He has been in computers "forever" and yes, built his own TRS80 back in the "old days". Boy, does that ever date us! Cherie began her career in banking and worked for several years as vice-president of a local bank holding company before deciding to stay home with the boys. While in banking, she got into computers almost by accident and discovered how much she enjoyed IT in general. After staying home and focusing on babies for a couple of years, Cherie volunteered to help her pastor with the church website. That began her stay-at-home career and Cherie now offers web design, hosting and promotional services through her own company, Ohana Design Group.

Our family of five (plus all our Havanese, cats and fish!) live on an acre in a suburban area just north of Houston near the master planned development of The Woodlands. Although we love our home, which we moved into recently, it is an older home and Joel and I figure we have several years worth of remodeling and updates to be done. Oh well...it accomodates our family, the setting  is lovely and all of the boys' schools are rated as explemplary. We'll just have to handle the remodeling lifestyle and take the good with the not-so-good. You may notice that we have a pool in our backyard and yes...our dogs do swim (at least when they are not in "show coat"). Some of our Havanese enjoy it, some simply tolerate it and a few avoid the water whenever possible, but all have been acclimated to the pool and know how to find the stairs to climb out just in case a rambunctious play session leads to one of them falling in. We recommend that all Havanese owners who are around water be certain that their dog becomes used to the water and knows how to get out of the water by themselves. Our dogs have access to the back portion of our acreage (which is fenced) via a doggie door and go in and out at will. While inside the house, we use baby gates to control access to certain areas when dogs are younger or when we have females in season here.

Outside of work and family, we love being active in our church, Lakewood Church. Our faith keeps us focused on what is important in life and without that we don't know how we would make it from day to day!

We enjoy showing our Havanese, and yes, this is our only breed. Cherie has served in many volunteer capacities with the Havanese Club of America (the AKC parent club for the breed). She has also been involved as founding president of the Lone Star Havanese Club and is working with other Havanese owners in the area to form the Gulf Coast Havanese Club to serve the east Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast. We also support several health foundations including the Canine Health Foundation.

Our feeling is that a well balanced lifestyle that involves family, faith, work and our hobby of dogs contributes to having a good perspective overall.

We have 3 wonderful sons who help us (to varying degrees...grin) with our dogs and who jokingly refer to themselves as the "unpaid kennel help". Jason is 25 now and uses a wheelchair to get around. He has Muscular Dystrophy (you know...Jerry's Kids) and is blessed with the most wonderful spirit. He is always smiling and our dogs are perfect companions for Jason. Several of them love to sit on his lap and go for rides in his wheelchair. Of course, they also have to cover his face with kisses while riding!

Brandon is our middle son and is 13 going on 21. He is in Jr. High and enjoys diving (just to keep mom on edge!), yearbook, theater arts and playing his drums. Full of energy, Brandon is always the funny one in our household and keeps us all laughing.

John is our youngest at age 12 and is in 6th grade. Out of all of the boys, John enjoys the dog show scene the most and has even tried his hand in the ring. He says that Tess is his favorite dog. He promises her belly rubs when she goes in the ring. Cherie keeps waiting for Tess to roll over and offer her belly to the judge for belly rubs too! John loves the sport of sabre fencing and we travel across the US with him for tournaments at the national level. He also is a wonderful bass player and was selected for honor orchestra and jazz orchestra at his school.

All of our dogs live indoors with us and like to sleep both in our bed as well as in their crates. Yes, they are totally spoiled, but can manage some semblance of discipline when needed! They love to travel with us and generally do better than our boys do in the car on long trips. On occasion, we will fly with one of them to Specialty shows or other large shows and they do great riding in a sherpa bag under the seat in front of us in the cabin.

Hopefully this provides you with a little more background about us and our family. We usually attend several of the Texas dog shows as well as Westminster and would love to talk more with you there. You can always contact us via phone or e-mail as well. Full details are available on the contact us page. Thanks for taking time to "meet" our family and we hope you enjoy your virtual visit here at Tejano Havanese!

website design by Ohana Design Group