The name Saw Dog is a play on words combining a woodworking tool with my daughter’s love of animals, especially dogs. To this day everywhere we go she will excitedly announce, “I saw a dog!”

Life has given me the opportunity to be a zookeeper, a dog trainer, an HVAC technician, and most recently a high school teacher. My career as a teacher was rewarding, but after the better part of 10 years it burnt me out and I decided there had to be a happier way to live my life.

I started woodworking with my grandfather before the age of seven, and my free time for nearly fifty years has always been spent building, renovating, and creating. I began building furniture after buying our first home in 2006. We couldn’t afford to buy new furniture, but wanted to phase out the prefab, apartment grade furniture we’d started out with as newlyweds. I moved all the tools my grandfather had left to me out of my parent’s basement and into my first shop. From there I taught myself how to build furniture. Family and friends started requesting their own pieces after seeing what I could do and I fell in love with the craft. Who knew that years later, with the support of my amazing wife and daughter, I would throw caution to the wind and quit teaching to follow my passion. Saw Dog opened on a shoe string budget, but we never had failure on our minds, and I have never been happier.