Sapphire Akitas
"About Us"
Our names are Katrina and
Tracy Popham. We have a small kennel based out of our home in Clarkston,
Washington. Kat is the one responsible for making dogs a huge part of our lives.
Tracy is busy with his own hobby, drag racing, as well as loving the dogs. You
can find more about his passion at www.tracypophamracing.com. As you can
imagine, summer weekends are busy between dog shows and drag races.
We have no plans to become a large kennel. Our dogs are
part of our family and each of them spends a significant amount of time in our
house each day. We firmly believe that our dogs should take part in obedience
training in order to be wonderful companions as well as good show dogs. Akitas
are an assertive, powerful breed. It requires significant time and effort to
make sure that these breed characteristics are an asset rather than a problem.
Our goal in breeding dogs is to adhere as closely as
possible to the breed standard. Temperament is also of utmost importance. We do
not and will not breed often, and will carefully plan each breeding in hopes of
improving our line of dogs with each litter. We hope that dogs from our kennel
will do well in the conformation ring AND be wonderful, stable companions.
Nothing would make us more proud than to find out that a dog we bred earned its
CGC, obedience titles, therapy dog certificate, etc.
I purchased my first Akita “Kali” from my good friend
Tess Bradley (Cashmere Akitas). Tess is responsible for getting me involved in
the world of dog shows. Kali is the queen of our kennel, and boy does she know
it. She loves to show in the conformation ring and begrudgingly cooperated
enough to get her novice rally title as well. Our crazy boy “Vibe” came from
another dear friend, Colleen Sullivan-Rosauer (Sondaisa Akitas). He is showing
great promise in the conformation ring and is still in training for obedience,
rally etc. Thanks to Tess and Colleen for the mentoring and especially for the
friendship!
Our menagerie doesn’t stop with Akitas. We also have a
Vizsla and a Betta fish. Our Vizsla, “Exxon” was supposed to be our bird
hunting dog, but seems to prefer watching TV while sitting on Tracy’s lap. He
will show in Rally at some point and shows great promise in agility as well. Our
Betta fish just swims around for the most part. We haven’t attempted any fish
obedience classes with him.
We love our animals very much. They are my passion and
hobby. Our dogs create a lot of joy and fun in our lives. At times they are very
therapeutic, even though none of them is an official “Therapy Dog”. We hope that
through responsible breeding, our dogs can provide as much joy to their owners
as our “kids” give to us.
Thanks for your interest in our dogs,
Kat and Tracy