Pia Castelline Biography
A good friend of mine, who owned 3 German Shorthaired Pointer’s, wanted to see my new dog-a 5 year old Large Munsterlander-hunt. I said sure and went along to get introduced to a new way of life. I had trained dogs for neighbors as a child growing up in Germany. After looking for an apprenticeship in the dog training field as a young adult in Germany, and having no luck, I went on to college in Germany making my dog training passion merely a hobby to be pursued with my own dogs.
After college I immigrated to the USA pursuing my career in the software industry. Now I was introduced to hunting at a time when I took a sabbatical from my job to focus on dogs for a year. I immersed myself in dog training in general and hunting dog training in particular. Having joined several NAVHDA chapters, I attended many training days and seminars. I also sought out field trial pointer and retriever trainers and attended their seminars to broaden my knowledge. At the same time I had already started my own pet sitting and family dog training service to help finance my new hunting dog obsession. I trained my personal dogs for agility in addition to hunting.
I was successful with my first Large Munsterlander pup and made it all the way to the NAVHDA Invitational. When I added personal dog number 3, a German Large Munsterlander import, I entered the world of JGHV and started testing, training and hunting in Germany as well. I have trained and tested my own as well as clients' dogs in NAVHDA events (Natural Ability, Utility and Invitational ), VHDF tests (Hunting Aptitude Evaluation and Performance) and JGHV tests (VJP, HZP and VGP) in Germany as well as in the USA.
Being given the opportunity to work with Ed at Autumn Breeze Kennel in 2008 has made my dog training life complete. Every day I look forward to the variety of dogs in the kennel that are yet to be trained. Really, who would want to hunt behind an untrained dog once having experienced how much more fun it is to hunt behind a trained dog.
When I am not training dogs I am hunting behind my Large Munsterlanders in the pursuit of pheasants, grouse, woodcock and partridge and I regularly take my dogs to Germany where we take part in driven hunts in the pursuit of wild boar, deer, fox etc.
