Showing her champions and battling cancer

ELIZABETHTOWN – Loretta Pyeatt and her husband have walked in some pretty powerful circles in the canine world, appearing in the top spot at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

With her husband Allen, their life has been an adventure, have run a world-class training center in Brunswick County and have traveled to numerous shows with their dogs.

“In 2023 our female Rottweiler Naughty achieved more success than any other female Rottweiler in the United States,” Pyeatt said. Some of her awards include Grand Champion Platinum Multiple Best In Shows breaking the record I set in 2000 with Dyna. She won more Reserve Best in Shows than any other female Rottweiler. In addition, she has won over 12 Best in Show Specialties and Best Opposite at The Rottweiler Nationals. Naughty also won the Top 20 and the People’s Choice and has accomplished Scent work titles.

“Today we enjoy our retirement living in Elizabethtown with our Rottweilers. Still travel some for shows and breeding.”

Pyeatt said that she has loved dogs as far back as she can remember.

“My first venture with dog training was after I watched a 4-H dog training class at a county fairground,” she said. “I was an observer of the class but practiced at home in our backyard. Dog training came easy to me.”

Later in life when her and her husband brought home a Rottweiler puppy while raising 2 small children, she insisted that the puppy went through basic obedience training. It was at that time in the early 80s that they met several other Rottweiler owners who encouraged the couple to show their dog named Kodiak.

“She became more involved in training obedience and conformation (show training),” Pyeatt said. “One thing led to another and we were involved almost every weekend competing at AKC conformation and obedience trials. After a lot of research and travel I found a beautiful breeder in Houston, Texas. I was lucky enough to purchase a female puppy I named Belaire. She was my breeding foundation.”

From Belaire came many Champions, Best in Show, Best in Show specialty, Futurity, obedience and Top 20 winning Rottweilers.

“In the late 90s I opened the dog training center called Canine Academy,” she said. “It specialized in obedience training for the everyday puppy/dog owner. We offered Agility, Rally and Scent work also. In the early 2000s we added a doggie day care and boarding. I volunteered with the club we started in Brunswick County called B.A.R.K. Brunswick Area Responsible K-9’s. I was a tester observer for Therapy Dogs Inc. which later changed their name to Alliance Therapy Dogs.”

BARK started a pet therapy program in area nursing homes and hospitals. They later added BARK For Reading which was a program for school age children 1 or more grade levels below in reading. We also started a program to feed senior citizens dogs and cats working with the county’s senior program and Meals on Wheels.

As for her training – she has trained every breed you could think of.

“And at the training center I had about 180 students a week,” she said. “As for the hardest to train, but not impossible; just harder are the hounds. It’s because of their sense of smell and people don’t understand this but their sense of smell is so great that they become so distracted all the time. So, Basset Hound is the hardest because its nose is right on the ground. I’ve also rescued some greyhounds off the track and they are also very hard to train.

It has been a magical run for the Pyeatts and after years of helping and training and volunteering their dogs for service, they had decided to sell their business and travel.

They sold their business which consisted of their K-9 training center which included boarding and day care in Brunswick County. Their last day was Feb. 14, 2024.

It was then that the family learned about facing some devastating news.

“I have ovarian cancer,” Pyeatt said. “I was diagnosed in March.”

In March 2024, Pyeatt was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer.

“I did all the surgery and all this chemo and after being cancer free, I went back after three months and have cancer again,” she said. “It’s now in my abdomen. After nine months of different chemo, it did not really work.”

“The first round was really debilitating for her,” Allan Payette said. “Now I just read off of her. I am a stress eater, so I’ve gained about 40 pounds.”

During the time of care and fatigue, Allen Payette took care of the dogs as well as his wife. For a couple that has eight dogs, that is no minuscule task.

“We have crates in our van, plus we have our motorhome,” he said. “It also has a garage unit on the back end. So, we fill that with crates and the dogs are always with us. We never leave our dogs behind.”

“We were in a really weird situation,” she said. “Because what we thought we were going to do was travel. With our business that was seven days a week, you can’t ever drive a great distance. We are both from the west. I am from California and Allen was born in the Texas panhandle, but was living in Colorado. My mom is in Montana. So, we thought, before the cancer diagnosis we were going to drive to Colorado and see family and then go up and see my mom in Montana.”

When they take a family vacation, it is something that takes great thought and planning and since they have eight dogs who are all their babies, and they always come along, it makes it more of a quest. The Pyeatts own a huge van with safety and personal pens in the back.

The battle against cancer has taken the wind out of their sails and they are navigating one day at a time. She has had two back surgeries and two neck surgeries, but somehow this is different and although she battles it head on – it’s different.

At one time they said that she’d never even hold a leash again – but she is a woman of strength that doesn’t have the term “give up” in her vocabulary.

Pyeatt went to Zimmer cancer center in Wilmington and they were looking for a new place to set down some roots. They decided upon Elizabethtown to harbor during this storm.

She said that her dogs could sense her sickness and actually diagnosed it before the medical community and she tells of a Malinois who was doing agility training at the time her cancer came back.

“Her name was Miska,” she said. “All of a sudden, she started to put her nose in my crotch… and you know… it was Ovarian cancer. Whenever I would try to give instruction for class and we would try to hold her back, she would run to me and cry. My dog did the same thing and began putting her head on my stomach. And that’s where it is right now… it’s in my abdomen.”

She said that the first year, she was considered a dead walking person, but with the encouragement of her family and of course her babies, she has made remarkable strides. She has regained so much strength that she has even started showing her dogs again this year.

“One thing is that my dogs motivate me,” she said. “At one time we didn’t have a fenced yard and so when they had to get up in the morning to go to the bathroom, we had to walk them. I didn’t feel like getting up but I made myself do it. After the cancer, my dogs won’t leave my side and they definitely give me a purpose.”

The raising and showing of dogs can be expensive, and without the revenue stream now of their training center, they are also taking that one day at time. In addition to their training center Allen has worked many extra jobs including driving trucks and tankers in Iraq under a civilian army contract.

Their focus now is on life. Perhaps a bit altered, but not much. They are still traveling and taking care of their precious family of dogs and pacing themselves so they have the strength to accomplish all they are hoping to accomplish.