A family, a circle of trainers, and trusted advisors. Meet the people who shape your puppy’s first chapters.
Meet the team ↓
The first lessons happen at home: gentle handling, familiar voices, everyday routines, and the care of people who know each puppy. The Stokes household is part of those first weeks, from newborn care to playtime.
Our training team brings structure to the everyday. Each placement is scoped to the puppy and the family, delivered in a trainer's own home, and kept deliberately limited so attention stays individual. Foundations are built through practice, observation, and daily records, preparing each puppy for life with its family.
Experienced advisors and veterinary partners support the program. Medford Veterinary Clinic provides veterinary care, while our wider team contributes guidance, education, and hands-on experience. Each person brings a distinct role to the puppy’s development.
James and Katie started Stokeshire in 2020 and still make every breeding, training, and placement decision themselves.
James founded Stokeshire in 2020 and directs the breeding program: pairing decisions, genetic planning, health testing, guardian homes, and the placement of every puppy with its family.
Before the dogs there was a camera. He has photographed weddings since 2010 and formed Stokhaus Media in 2013, which is where the program's habit of documenting everything comes from. He grew up on a fifth-generation dairy farm in Amherst Junction, Wisconsin, and is completing an MBA in Marketing and Entrepreneurship at Concordia University Wisconsin. James and Katie have ten children.
Katie leads puppy development, training, and transport. Since 2020 she has overseen every litter from whelping through go-home: early neurological stimulation, socialization, the Doodle School™ and Bootcamp™ programs, and the handoff to each family.
She coordinates directly with the training team and plans every puppy's travel, including flight nanny arrangements, airport coordination, and ground transport. For anything related to your puppy's training or transportation, Katie is your point of contact.
James and Katie married in 2007 and have worked together for more than fifteen years.
Whelping, socialization, feeding, cleaning, and photographs are daily chores in our house. These are the children who do them.
Anakin personally escorts puppies to families across the country and keeps the program's digital systems running behind the scenes. He studied at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix and is continuing his education closer to home at Northcentral Technical College, with interests in psychology and technology.
Rivalee prepares the whelping areas, supports newborns through their first days, and leads socialization through the early weeks. A Wisconsin state discus finalist, she hopes to work in interior design and to live in Utah one day. She is "mom" to Mack and Luna, two of our own dogs, who join her on walks around the farm.
Jasper manages the daily routines of our adult dogs: feeding, exercise, enrichment, and the ongoing obedience, impulse control, and socialization that keep a grown Stokeshire dog easy to live with. He adjusts his approach to each dog's temperament and energy, and he says the reward that matters is an adult dog looking up at you, relaxed and ready to listen.
Ronan and Joren handle meals, fresh water, cleaning routines, and sanitation for the puppies' living spaces. Off the farm they play soccer and hockey, and they rank a post-bath puppy right up there with scoring a goal.
Eveline runs playtime and early handling, helps with the photographs, looks after the chickens, and models for Stokeshire. She plays soccer and hockey.
“careful, family-oriented philosophy”
“sweet, intuitive, and raised with such care”
“smart, trainable, and emotionally balanced”
“healthy, trained, and clearly loved”
“above and beyond to support us”
“immense care, honesty, and flexibility”
“they truly care about all of their animals, and it shows”
“very responsive and informative”
Doodle School™ and Bootcamp™ are reserved for Stokeshire families and limited by trainer availability. Every placement is custom to the puppy and the household it is going home to, delivered in a trainer's own home, and documented with daily records and weekly assessments in the Stokeshire Companion app.
Lisa brings more than a decade of animal science education to the Stokeshire training team. She has been the agriculture educator and FFA advisor at Medford Area Senior High School since 2014 and holds a Bachelor of Science in Agricultural Education from the University of Wisconsin–River Falls. She conceived and led the building of the school's agriculture barn, a hands-on livestock program featured on PBS Wisconsin's Wisconsin Life.
Under her leadership, Medford FFA students have competed in local and state FFA speaking contests and career development events, attended the National FFA Convention, traveled internationally, and delivered community projects that reached hundreds of local families.
She trains the way she teaches. She reads each dog as an individual, finds what motivates it, and builds confidence through structure, consistency, and reward, which fits the positive, relationship-first curriculum of the Stokeshire Method™.
On the Kopp family farm, Lisa raises and trains her own horses, two AKC Chesapeake Bay Retrievers, Croix and Coral, and a Miniature American Shepherd, Snickers. The Chesapeakes hunt pheasant and compete in AKC Rally. Snickers has competed with Lisa's daughter in AKC conformation and agility.
Korby leads Bootcamp™: intake, daily training, weekly updates to each family, and the handoff home, including flight nanny coordination when a puppy travels. A speech-language pathologist by profession, trained at the University of South Dakota, she brings a clinician's habit of clear goals and documented progress to puppy work.
Karlee trained at Highland Canine School for Dog Trainers in its Obedience and Behavior Modification Program and is a Certified Professional Pet Dog Trainer based in Medford, with a degree in Small Business Entrepreneurship. She works with Stokeshire families after Doodle School™ and beyond, giving owners the information and tools to understand their dog and keep building the relationship.
Medical oversight and veterinary care come from people outside our household who have been part of the program for years.
Dr. Lee brings more than twenty years of clinical experience to Stokeshire as a medical advisor and training consultant. A Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine and Certified Wound Specialist, she contributes a systems-based, evidence-informed approach to early puppy handling, recovery, and behavior foundations, and she takes part in training sessions herself.
Outside medicine she is a mentor, a horse lover, and an advocate for ethical, compassionate care.
Dr. Moodie is a 2011 graduate of the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine and was raised on his family's farm in Bradford, Illinois. His practice has centered on dairy and livestock medicine, with a lasting interest in dogs and preventive care. He and his wife, Jennifer, co-own the Medford Veterinary Clinic and are the guardian family for Bowser, who lives with them, their three children, and their dog Wilson on a small hobby farm.
Every Stokeshire puppy begins veterinary care at Medford Veterinary Clinic: the first wellness exam, initial vaccinations, and the health certificate before travel. Dr. Moodie oversees the care of our adult dogs and puppies, which gives the program one clinic's continuity from conception through go-home day. Stokeshire could not operate as it does without this family and their friendship.
Trainers who have moved on from the program. Their work is in the dogs they raised.
Joined in 2021 as a flight nanny, escorting puppies to families across the country, then added in-home grooming for Central Wisconsin clients and Bootcamp™ training.
A Doodle School™ trainer and flight nanny who lived two miles down the road. He focused on puppies headed for therapy and facility work and pursued certification as a therapy dog handler.
Co-trainer for the four-week foundations program. A retired special education teaching assistant from the Tomorrow River School District, wife, mother, and grandmother, she brought patience and structure to the puppies' first weeks of training.
Raised puppies at Lutz Family Farms in Amherst Junction, giving them early, supervised exposure to cattle, horses, and open space.
The current team contributes across your puppy’s journey: the pairing, the whelping, the training, the veterinary record, the photographs, the flight home. If that is the kind of program you are looking for, the application is the next step.
