Maurice Lindley

"Being around people in the business, watching others, it’s exciting because every dog is different", he says. "I had dogs I trained for myself, then about 20 years ago, I started training dogs for others."

He learned his trade not only from reading every book available, but also by pestering other trainers such as Paul Long in North Carolina and Canadian Collier Smith.

He said the most important things he learned are what not to do and to teach the dogs through repetition.

"It’s an everyday job, and you can’t get the repetitions taking a dog out a couple of times a week", he says.

This trainer of pointers and retrievers, so respected he’s been featured in the magazine Quail Unlimited and the television show "Country Sportsman", is also deaf.  

Four years ago, he lost all hearing in his right ear. He was diagnosed with Meniere’s syndrome, what he jokingly calls "some French disease"

Not much is known about the illness, other than that it’s caused by allergies. There is no cure, but the person normally loses hearing in only one ear.

Lindley proved an exception when he lot hearing in his left ear and became completely deaf last year. 

A new method of training the dogs needed to be learned. A Texas trainer taught him a silent way to work.

It’s a technique he actually finds better than his old method.

"To me, the silence is the best way. I wish I’d been doing it 20 years," he says. "You think about it, dogs don’t know a word of English so it’s better to show them than to tell them."

Lindley's Kennel sits on 260 acres "where he could turn the trainees loose to be sure they’d learned well." It includes a boarding kennel, grooming and training facilities.

Maurice is has a wife, Kaye, and a step-daughter, Sonya.

Borrowed from THE GREENVILLE NEWS, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1998. by Jimmy Cornelison

Maurice Lindley
Lindley Kennels
803-243-4979 (Home)
803-243-3583 (Kennel)
SouthernGunDog@aol.com


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