Lennoxlove Kennel

Lennoxlove Kennel is the name of the kennel owned by John Hamilton and Marile Waterstraat, breeders of Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers. Our kennel is located on twenty acres in the town of Macedon, New York, which is located outside of Rochester, New York. The name for our kennel comes from the name of the Hamilton manor house in Scotland. John’s mother and grandparents on his father’s side were all from Scotland. We visited England and Scotland many years ago and of course had to visit the family namesake. When we were ready to name a kennel, we decided to adopt this name. (Check this link for more about the manor house!)

We currently have seven Tollers. They are Bhalgair of Lennoxlove (Val), Colony’s Lennoxlove Victoria (Vicki), Lennoxlove’s Jasper Jones, Esq. (Jasper), Lennoxlove’s Cayuga Shandy (Shandy), Lennoxlove’s Bronze Trinket (Trinket), Foxvale Aurora at Lennoxlove (Aurie) and Lennoxlove’s Autumn Painter (Painter).

Experiences of John and Marile

Back in 1980 John decided that he wanted to get back into hunting but did not want to hunt without a dog and not be able to recover his game. Marile, however, did not want a large dog. At that time we were living in a 1300 square foot condominium. Marile is a school librarian and had a new book, The American Dog Book by Kurt Unkelbach, cross her desk, that had a picture of little red dogs on the cover. She read the article on this breed and brought the book home to John. Marile told him that this was the dog for him, and that he would love saying the name, Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever. At that time it took several years to find the name of a breeder for Tollers. We obtained Sue VanSloun’s name in Massachusetts as "the" only breeder in the United States. After writing to Sue, we took John’s sons skiing in Vermont. There was no snow and everyone was getting restless so we drove to Massachusetts to look at the dogs. Sue was away with a dog being tested for the hearing dog program and we talked to Sue’s husband Neil, who showed us the available dogs. We later decided to purchase two dogs, Rusty Jones (Sylvan’s Rusty Jones) and Misty (Sproul’s Misty Morn). In February 1983, Sue drove to Albany New York where she met us along the New York State Thruway and we received our first two of many subsequent Tollers.

The next step in our conversion from pet owners to show people began that fall when we received a phone call from Sue saying that there was a dog show in Baltimore, Maryland that would allow us to enter our dogs. So we all drove to Baltimore and entered Rusty in conformation. Although he did not win the first year, the next he won Best in Show and we were hooked. During that show we helped to establish the Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever Club (USA). This complete history can be read on the Club’s web page.