My lifelong fascination with reptiles began when I was too young to even know what I was getting into. When I was about four years old I had my mother cut out paper snakes which I then carried around in a shoebox.

I began keeping a collection of local snakes and other herps in my pre-teen days, eventually advancing to a broad range of species as budget and access allowed. At the same time, I developed a strong interest in snake cage design and construction. Most of my early cages were made from plywood that I scavenged from local construction sites around my neighborhood.

In 1989 I attended my first reptile show and noticed the lack of availability of good cages. I was working as a cabinet and furniture maker, and took some cages to the show the following month. I quickly sold them all and had requests for more. This quickly led to the start of CageMaster Reptile Cages, which went national in 1993. Some of these cages and rack systems are still in use today. The business was sold in 1996.

During the CageMaster years, I began to develop a substantial group of green tree pythons. In 1997, I produced my first clutch of GTP babies. I made the decision to work with this species exclusively, launching my website finegtps.com that same year. Over the next dozen years I produced some of the most recognizable and sought-after captive bred chondros in the world. In 2003 I authored the best-selling book, The Complete Chondro, followed by The More Complete Chondro in 2005. These have been called ‘the bible’ of GTP keeping and breeding and were so popular that they inspired a full line of “complete” herp books for my publisher, Eco Publishing.

In 2010 I took a break from snake breeding. I attended a school in Big Rapids, Michigan to learn guitar repair and building. Dogwood Guitars was launched in March of that year and fifteen years of repair, restoration and crafting of custom guitars followed. I am retiring from full-time guitar work in October 2025.

Returning to my lifelong love of reptile keeping and breeding in 2021, I now have a breeding group of select ball pythons, as well as a growing collection of locality colubrids. These include all four phenotypes of hunt club Okeetee corn snakes, amelanistic everglades rat snakes, hypo Bairds rat snakes, Cape Baja gopher snakes, and Trans-Pecos rat snakes.