What on earth is a Menagerie? I get that question all the time... it means "collection of animals". I have had animals all of my life and not just a dog or a cat, but many types of animals all at once. When I was a kid and people visited us they would say "Wow, you have a lot of animals". My mother would tell them "Oh, that's Marna's Menagerie", and so the name stuck. Marna is my given name.

I have had many types of animals and taught tricks to many of them, chickens, a duck, dogs, cats, horses, a guinea pig, parakeets, a cockatiel, goats, ponies are some I have taught tricks to over the years... I love training animals. I have trained sled dogs and lead dogs from a book, and again with books have broke horses to ride. I have had more types of animals then I can probably remember; dogs, horses and parakeets are my favorites.

I am married to Deron Kazmaier who is, among many things, a Mid-Distance Sled Dog Racer. His kennel name was/is DogStar Kennel www.dogstarkennel.com. Deron own, trains, run, races and raises AKC Seppala line Siberian Huskies www.seppalanews.com. The joke at our house is that I married the guy with all the dogs and he married the harness maker.

Deron shares my love of animals and he and I along with running sled dogs, have backpacked many miles with dogs who also wear backpacks, team penned on horse back, taken packing trips with our own horses right off our own property, hiked with goats, and chased many more animal related rainbows.

We also have other animals and other animal hobbies. We enjoy packing/camping with the horses, goats www.workinggoats.com and [url]llamas www.workingllamas.com[/url]... usually that means they all go as well as a few of our dogs on each trip.

We call our place in the woods "Grasshopper Ranch" we would rather play the work... so we made our play our source or income. Deron loves computers and is a computer programmer. He created a desk top publishing program in 1985. It is called PageStream www.pagestream.org, and we believe it to be the best on the market. I make and sell animal equipment. What I sell, we use. I have designed many of the items myself for the use on our animals.

Besides playing Frisbie with a few of our dogs www.upnorthdiscdogs.com (I used to compete). Deron made some regulation Dog Agility equipment for the dogs and I to play with. I had such a good time with that, I got into Fancy Rat Agility. That's right, other species of animals enjoy the same game of agility. See www.theagilerat.com as well as www.rabbitagility.com you might get some "big ideas" of your own.

We own many animals, in fact we have more animals then sense or cents. We have animals large and small and I spend each and every morning feeding, watering and cleaning up after them, it takes me about 3 1/2 - 4 1/2 hours. Then any training I am doing begins.

Our philosophy is: BREED THEM RIGHT, FEED THEM RIGHT, TREAT THEM RIGHT: We Breed Right and We Feed Right!! I do not breed my animals every time they come into heat. We also are careful about who is breeding who...ie pedigrees.

We only (even the mice) breed a litter, maybe two then rest the mother. We pride ourselves on buying quality food for each of our species. My Guinea Pigs DO NOT eat rabbit food, and my small animals do not eat Finch Food. Our birds do not eat dog food, ect. Deron teases me that our kitchen counter looks like "feeding time at the zoo" each morning. I have three baby bottles lined up for the goats as well as paper plates full of cut up people grade veggies for all the small animals and reptiles. We also do not hurry weaning any of the babies at our house. We may give them too much time with mom in some breeder opinions, but I would rather do that then wean too soon.