Charme Zumfelde has been teaching students across CJUSD for nearly 25 years, first at Bloomington High and now at Colton High. The community knows her as “Miss Z,” Colton’s credit recovery teacher, but what most students don’t know is that Zumfelde has just about the cutest side hustle ever: breeding corgis. 

Zumfelde started her teaching career in the year 2000. While she currently teaches a credit recovery class, she started off at Colton High teaching Plant Science class back in 2011. Prior to that, she taught at Bloomington High.

“I was over at Bloomington and I started there in 2000. I taught the Agriculture FFA.”

Agriculture is quite a big part of Zumfelde’s life; in fact, it’s exactly what led her to her breeding business. 

Although it’s not hard to see why corgis are easy to love, or why one would want to dabble in breeding such a cute animal, what drew Zumfelde to this particular breed?

Her love for the corgis started early.

“I was raised on a big dairy cattle farm and I was always around herding dogs.”

Corgis, also known as welsh corgis, are a small breed of herding dogs that are often utilized on farms. Considering Zumfelde was raised on a farm, it only makes sense that she’d be around them enough to have the opportunity to learn more about them in comparison to the average person. 

“My kids have been in the FFA their entire lives.” she said. “And so we’ve had livestock. Goats and horses and pigs and steers and chickens and corgis were the best breed to help work the animals and move them around. And then I just fell in love with their personality.”

The FFA, which stands for Future Farmers of America, is an organization that offers middle through high school classes that promote and support agriculture education. This organization is one of great importance to her as she not only taught in it but she also enrolled her children in it.

Zumfelde explained that just as she raised her kids, she was also raised on a big farm over in Chino; meaning agriculture and farming is something that’s run in her blood since she was young.

Zumfelde doesn’t run this business alone, however. Although she’s decided to keep it strictly a “family thing” she said, she’s ran her business alongside her husband for the past 20 years

Considering the fact that most people on campus are not aware of Zumfelde’s business, it’s evident she likes to keep it intimate; meaning if you know, you know.

“I gain clients by word of mouth. I don’t advertise them on Facebook or anything, I don’t believe in that. It’s just word of mouth and all dogs are usually sold before they hit the ground.”

In fact, Mr. Dollins, our Pepper Bough adviser, is one of the few clients who purchased a corgi from Zumfelde upon learning about her business through word of mouth.   

“I’ve known Ms. Zumfelde since she started working here in 2011,” said Dollins.

“She used to work at Saturday School when I was running it years ago. She would sometimes bring her dogs with her. That led to us talking about it and she told me that she bred the dogs. It wasn’t long before my wife and I, who were looking to go into pet ownership, decided to ask her if she was willing to sell one to us.”

Dollins described the process of working with Zumfelde as overall easy.

“It was a simple process. She took care of all the hard stuff and all we had to do was pay and bring home our beautiful puppy.”

Taking into consideration that she likes to keep her merchandising on a small scale, Zumfelde breeds the corgis out of her house.  

When I asked about the process of breeding itself, she explained it as slightly more intricate than the birds and the bees

Zumfelde explained: “Animals are not like humans. Humans breed just to breed, animals will only breed when they’re in what’s called standing heat. So we have to get blood work done, and find out where they’re estrogen levels are. When that time comes, nine times out of 10, we will collect the male and artificially inseminate the female.”

Aside from selling these dogs, she also has a few of her own; one of which has a famous ancestor. 

“I have the corgis, I have an Australian Cattle Dog, and then I have a Great Pyrenees. The Great Pyrenees grandfather is the dog from the movie Santa Paws.” she shared. 

Santa Paws, or “The Search for Santa Paws”, is a Disney original movie all about Santa Claus and his loyal canine companion who go on a mission of leaving the North Pole; this companion just happens to be a grandpa.

Although Zumfelde may appear to just be a credit recovery teacher, there’s a life full of corgis and agriculture beyond the surface.