As a small program, we are not the fanciest program out there. We don't have the nicest dogs, or the most successful dogs. We are a young program and we are still finding our way in the world and working on accomplishing things with our youngsters. What we do have is a fresh, un-jaded mindset on breeding and the ability to commit ourselves to a very strict code of ethics based on our personal values. Here are a few of our commitments that set us apart from other breeders. Please note that I'm not saying people who disagree on these issues are unethical. I know many ethical breeders who DO practice many of things listed below. We are simply informing the public of our PERSONAL value system so we can match our future puppies to buyers who share our values.

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1. We do not alter ear sets via tape or glue. We stopped doing this after our first MAS Spyro when we realized that despite being common place, it is dishonest both to judges and to perspective puppy families.

2. We do not participate in "grooming to hide flaws" when we show. Our dogs are bathed, dried and brushed, with loose scraggly hairs trimmed up. We do not "shape" their top lines or hind ends with creative trimming. We do not use volumizing products, chalk, or any other product that would alter our dogs from their natural appearance. Win or lose, we do it honestly!

3. We do not mutilate our dogs by removing their tails or front dewclaws. We do remove rear dews ONLY if they are loose and hanging in such a manner as to be likely to rip off. Our 2 foundation dogs are docked, but we have since educated ourselves and no longer support this practice.

4. We do not re-home our retired breeding dogs. Our dogs are family, and they stay here forever. They do not cease to be important to our family when we are done with their uterus. We see retiring a dog as the perfect time to start really focusing on their sport careers! We keep our program small enough that there is room for everyone to stay here. We love the dog first and the program second.

5. We do not breed to make a profit or supply a market. We only breed every few years when we plan to KEEP a sport puppy. Our first litter was in 2023. We will not breed again until late 2025, possibly 2026. The puppies we do not keep are very reasonably priced in comparison to other breeders who title and health test their dogs. We are committed to being reasonably affordable for the average middle class person because we do not want to push people into the arms of backyard breeders.

6. We do not breed for the "pet market". The shelters and rescues are full of great pets for people to adopt. We breed specifically for sport use and farm use. Though we are open to placing puppies in knowledgeable, experienced pet homes, that is not our goal for breeding. This is not a "pet breed". It's a working breed. We do not believe in watering down the breed just to create desirable pets. We are committed to maintaining the proper temperament for this breed; they should be high drive, high energy and have some degree of herding instinct. Though we breed for the sport ring, we assess all our dogs for stock interest. Some of our dogs we produce do not have the greatest "pet temperaments" and we are upfront about this. Our lines are not overly social and require dedication to socialization.

7. We do not over-breed our girls (The goal is one litter per lifetime unless the litter doesn't produce what we need to keep for our program).

8. Our dogs are health tested beyond the recommendations by our breed club. This includes hips, elbows, eyes, patellas, and DNA. We will be doing the new NAD test on all breeding dogs before our next breeding takes place.

9. We are honest about our dogs. If there are pedigree questions (due to hardship registry for example, as is the case with our FSS dogs), we disclose this. If we have seen temperament issues in a line, we talk about it. If our dogs are carriers for a genetic trait, it's made public.

10. We do not inbreed our dogs aka "line-breed". While some common ancestors are unavoidable in a breed this young, we make every effort for those ancestors to be as far back as possible. The science is very clear on the dangers of inbreeding dogs. I have studied genetics and animal production, and feel strongly about this.

11. We support open studbooks because genetic diversity is critical to a breed's long term health.

12. Our dogs do not live in detached kennel buildings or outdoors. They live in our home and sleep in our bed. We do have kennels in our home for when we are not at home but these are located right in our living space.

13. We do not show in AKC conformation, due to their history of discriminating against owner handlers, discriminating against natural tails and ears, promoting artificial grooming, not enforcing their own rules against altering ear sets and hair texture, and their tendency to reward fads, exaggerated features and hypertypes. We rarely show conformation at all these days, but when we do, we show primarily with the much more ethical United Kennel Club. We do support AKC sports as that is a very different world from the show ring. We do have many friends who show AKC and we support them from afar, but do not feel comfortable giving the AKC show world our money.

14. We place a greater emphasis on athleticism, skill, drive and intelligence than we do on cosmetic features like "type" or "ear set". We want to breed dogs that DO THINGS and do them well! We will never breed a dog just based on a conformation title or even a couple of basic sport titles. We either want to see a lot of versatile titles in multiple events or higher level titles in a specialty event (RACH, MACH, etc). Though we bred our first litter between 2 dogs that were 2yrs old, moving forward, we will be breeding at a later age as we have decided it's important to have more time to assess a dog's abilities at mid-to-high level sports prior to breeding. We simply don't know enough about our dogs at 2yrs old to decide if they're worthy of breeding.