Our story · Since 1939 on Fish River

A family, a river, and more than sixty years of dogs.

Belle Shain began with a boy growing up among Chesapeakes and black Labs at the old Grand Hotel Fish Camp. Three generations later, the dogs still come first.

How it began

Horses, then dogs, on the same ground.

Frank’s grandfather raised thoroughbreds at Clearwater Stables in Fairhope with his partner, Ed Roberts, and in 1939 bought the old Grand Hotel Fish Camp on Fish River. His son, Rob Leatherbury, spent his childhood there in the 1930s and 1940s, surrounded by Chesapeakes and black Labs.

Rob became a devoted duck hunter and a founding member of the Mobile Amateur Retriever Club. In 1958 he founded Belle Shain Kennels on the family land, and the next year he married Mary Shain. Belle, French for beautiful, and Shain, for her: Belle Shain.

Rob Leatherbury at the pond with Belle Shain’s Gingersnap, “Ginger.”

Frank followed his father through the fields at age three. His first dog was a black Lab named Jeff, after Jeff Ray, a longshoreman friend at the Port of Mobile. He learned by watching and apprenticing with Hall of Fame trainers, and has spent more than forty years training retrievers and family dogs and judging at the Master level.

1939 · 1958 · Today

Three generations on the same ground.

His grandfather loved horses, his father loved dogs, and Frank has carried on both.

1939Frank’s grandfather buys the Grand Hotel Fish Camp

1958Rob Leatherbury founds Belle Shain Kennels

1959Rob marries Mary Shain, and Belle Shain has its name

1963Frank, age three, begins beside his father

1970s–80sCompeting across the country

TodayTraining, care, the Journal, and Canine Kitchen

The land

Thirty-four acres of woods, fields, and water.

Woodlands, open fields, ponds, Cowpen Creek, and frontage on Fish River: room for dogs to learn, swim, and run. The property is registered with the Baldwin County Historic Development Commission.

The Grand Hotel Fish Camp

Who you’ll meet