About Us

Questions/Topics from Puppy Applicants

 

Q: When will you have puppies?

A: At present, we are planning on a spring/summer 2022 litter.

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Q: Why are you waiting until next year to have a litter?

A: Sage will turn 2 years old in July, and we can't do OFA hip/elbow screening until then.

 

The straight dirt is her hips aren't as tight as I'd like them to be, and I want to see what OFA tests have to say about them before I decide to breed her. The last thing I want is to give someone a puppy that will be crippled by the time they're 2 years old. Her scores have her rated at what I'd say is like a C-, or below the breed average. Not failing, not dysplastic, no signs of wear, but not an A+ either. This means I need to find a suitable male that can hopefully improve on that score, or I may ultimately decide not to breed her.
 

Q: Why'd you get a dog for breeding without great hips?

A: The thing I'm finding is it's very easy to be an armchair breeder, but reality is much different. Sometimes you can get a 90% fantastic dog, but one that's just not the best of the best in some area. There's a saying among breeders that there is no such thing as a perfect dog and unfortunately that's true. You can't know what you have in terms of estimated breeding value until the dog has grown up.

 

I could be one of those breeders who has 12 dogs and just shuffles off the ones that don't fit the bill, but I got Sage with the intention of her being my pet and companion first and foremost. If she's not suitable for breeding, that's unfortunate, but I'm a dog-lover and pet-owner who loves her and made a commitment to her. I bought a dog suitable for me and my life, with the hopes of starting a breeding program with her, but not as a "livestock" animal-husbandry purchase eligible for culling if she doesn't win the purse. That being said, I did research her lines extensively and parents carefully for a dog with suitable breeding potential.

So I like her pedigree, she's got a great temperament and health through her lines, but something like hips can't be predicted with 100% accuracy until they're full-grown. That said, there are also a lot of environmental factors that can contribute to loose hips as well, and unfortunately, my linoleum and hardwood floors aren't great for developing tight hips. Perhaps if she'd lived with wall-to-wall carpeting growing up, they'd be better. It's not an excuse to discount it, but it's a consideration that her puppies may have great hips or terrible hips depending on the environmental factors of their new homes as well.

 

There are also very nice dogs I've met whom I'd love to own one of their puppies, but there may be something lurking in there genes that concerns me as a breeder. My Aussie Teak is a good example - I got him because I loved the temperament of his parents, but he was never intended to be bred. He was to be a companion dog only. He's a fantastic, handsome boy with a wonderful sweet temperament, but frankly came from an "oops" litter. As a pet, he's wonderful, but at 10.5 years old, I see he struggles with a bit of arthritis due to his wonky structure from two dogs who didn't properly compliment each other, he has a sensitive stomach, and has a few genetic risks. Because the breeder is very good, he's still an awesome dog from awesome parents, and he's doing quite well, but he's not the best of the best. He's the "worst of the best."

 

So as a breeder, "average" is not good enough to me. That's what defines a backyard breeder from someone who does their homework. A backyard breeder is simply breeding two dogs they think would make nice or pretty puppies without any thought going beyond that. A serious hobby breeder however has done extensive research into pedigrees and lines and met relatives and tried to find out all the family anomalies and weird things thrown as well as getting to know temperaments and structure to make sure they're producing sound, healthy dogs keeping with the breed standard.

 

A good breeder will know if your puppy has cousins or grandparents who had some oddity thrown, and had to weigh the risk of including it into their lines. As so many dogs are spayed and neutered these days, breeding options are also limited by who's still intact as well. So by the time a dog is 2 years old, or 5 years old, and you can do tests that show whether or not they would be a fantastic breeding candidate, the dog has been rendered infertile.

As a potential puppy owner, you're trusting me to make some hard decisions and do risk assessment you can't even know about so that the biggest risk you're taking is possibly getting the worst of the best. A dog that might need lamb dog-food instead of chicken, still doesn't need much more than yearly vet checkups, and only exhibits minor old age problems and arthritis when he's 10 or older, not when he's 5.

 

What you don't want is a dog that needs a special prescription diet, medication to keep his autoimmune disease under control, anti-seizure meds, debilitating painful dysplasia at 2 years old or a dog that will die of some weird anomaly by 5 years old. Nobody wants a dog that is costly to maintain, in pain or a foul mood all the time, or drops dead on you at a young age. And as a breeder I certainly don't want to produce it! Sadly, however, exceptions can happen because there is no such thing as a perfect dog.

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So, Sage's hips aren't as perfect as I'd like them to be, but otherwise, she has proven to be affectionate, athletic, intelligent, a nice size, a fantastic easy coat, has a hearty constitution/stomach, and many other factors. So I'm not completely discounting her solely based on sub-par hips, because she's got so many other positive attributes.

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Q: Are you a good breeder or a backyard breeder?

A: Well, being a good breeder is the idea, but I'm all about honesty and visibility (ask me anything, and I'll give you a straight answer. Don't let anybody tell you there's a 100% guarantee of health/longevity/temperament, because that's just not true!

I have not bred any litters yet. The one I'm planning will be my first. That said, I've been a serious dog owner with serious breeder friends for my entire adult life. I've been heavily involved in canine sports and performance, training, rescue, and other activities, and I have researched the heck out of the breeders and lines before getting my dogs. So even if you don't want a puppy from me, I hope you'll take my advice in finding a suitable responsible breeder. If I've convinced you to do that much, I feel like I've improved the dog world and steered you away from irresponsible breeders and puppy-mills. So from serious dog-owner to one who's shopping, you can trust I've got experience there, at least.

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I haven't delved into breeding until now because I consider it a huge responsibility to put life on the planet, and I'm kept up at night worrying that my puppies will be well-loved and cared for, and healthy. (You can get a sense with how much I obsess and think about stuff by how much text there is on this website on the subject!)

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I have been doing extensive health testing, and even if I ultimately decide not to breed her, I see this data as worth it to improve the breed so we know what's out there.

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So the short answer is, I'm unproven as a breeder. But I hope to do it responsibly and with mindfulness.

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Q: How do you think English Shepherds compare with Australian Shepherds?

A: My disclaimer: I have known a lot of English Shepherds, Australian Shepherds and Border Collies, but my answer is based on my own history of living with 3 Australian Shepherds, 1 English Shepherd and 1 Sheltie, so take that as you will. I can't be a spokesperson for entire breeds or different lines, I can only answer based on my own experiences living with my dogs and meeting other peoples'. But I have probably come in contact with other dogs in both breeds far more than your average pet owner through sports, dog shows, play-dates with others in the breed, etc.
 

Tattle-tale vs. Class Clown

My own take is Aussies are like the class clown, and English Shepherds are the class tattle-tale or "teacher's pet". My English Shepherd is a very rule-oriented "old soul". They're still playful of course, but they don't continue long after the game's over and the joke has grown tired like an Aussie will.

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Sage (my ES) is a fantastic worker, she's very affectionate, but I'd say she's a bit more sensitive than the "baby Huey" Aussies who tend to friend-everyone-into-submission by bowling them over, pinning them with their paws and french-kissing them. I say Sage is a tattle-tale, because every time my Aussie Teak breaks a rule, she has to dart in and nip him on the neck to "correct" him. She won't if we're watching and tell her to leave him alone, but she needs to be a rule-enforcer and make sure everybody is following the "rules." This goes for visitors to the house, as well.

 

Guarding Tendencies
The best way to meet an English Shepherd (and has been how I've met strange English Shepherds on their home turf always) is to sit in a chair before they come meet you. If you're standing, you're an unknown entity that could do unpredictable things in the dog's mind. If you're seated, at least they can keep a suspicious eye on you while they size you up and determine whether you're a threat or not. If you have visitors with a stiff posture, or standing, they're liable to get a nip in the calf if you're not watching closely, because they are not right and are out of order with the routine.

 

These nippy/controlling guardian instincts can make them a bit nippy towards people/children if they don't deem them fit leadership. (i.e. you are either a shepherd or a sheep). Being a "herd boss" breed, they can be rather pushy/bossy unless you command authority and they respect you. This goes for Aussies as well.

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If visitors are dog-savvy and relaxed, Sage generally accepts them. My personal wish is that she more readily accepted visitors, but there are a few reasons for this going back to her working-lines, and my own personal stiffness at visitors (English Shepherds "read" their owners very well, so the fact that I'm a bit socially awkward means I'm broadcasting discomfort that she's picking up on).

 

Activity Level

English Shepherds have a very nice "off-switch" compared to Aussies and Border Collies, which means they're great around the house. That being said, all intelligent sheepdogs need their brains challenged. This doesn't mean they need to run miles and miles every day, it means they need interaction with their humans and taught to do useful tasks or tricks. But they should ideally have a large area where they can safely run unleashed, as well. Gym class and physical activity is definitely a necessity for any sheepdog, but Math class is probably more important. If you just want a dopey, physically active, kid-friendly dog without much intelligence, I'd probably recommend one of the typical family-dog retrievers of some sort. (Still do your homework though).

 

Nipping/Children

I've personally never had a super-nippy Aussie, except as puppies. That's not to say I haven't been herded off a farm by a pack of Aussies protecting against intruders (they left my calf black and blue through jeans) when I was wandering around looking for the owner. But the ones I've owned - *maybe* they'd do that with intruders if I wasn't present, but mostly they make a lot of noise. Sage will definitely act like those farm-Aussies though and kick into guardian mode nipping and herding them off the property. (She has a tendency to want to do this even when I'm present and tell her to stand down as well - something to consider).

Why would this be considered acceptable in the breed? Well, they're honestly not meant to be suburban dogs - they're a working farm breed, and you likely don't want coyotes, wolves, or rustlers on the property causing trouble. So this strong guarding tendency is considered a good thing. With any breed, remember the breed origins, and consider how it will fit into your life. If you're a suburban household considering a working farm-dog breed, these are things you'll have to contend with. While training and socialization help exponentially, these traits are hard-coded into the breed and likely to show up at times, trained or not.

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Sage's parents both get along with children well, and her mother lives with a toddler and is very sweet with her. One of Sage's brothers has a newborn baby he's good with too. I can't speak to Sage's experience with children, however, as we don't have any, and we've been in quarantine so long. The nipping tendencies would make me hesitant (as a breeder) to place her puppies in families with small children, not knowing how they'd react.

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Two of my Aussies were therapy dogs for special-needs children, even not having lived with any children. They seemed to inherently "know" children were special and need a gentle touch. That being said, however, they will still probably good-naturedly bowl over a toddler just because they push and shove their big furry butts around the house in complete ignorance. They were also very tolerant of some very anti-social poor-dog-skill behavior from some of these kids, getting pounced on, legs pulled, poked at, faces grabbed and kissed, etc. Every dog is different, so don't take this as a blanket-statement of the Australian Shepherd breed, but in comparison, I can't imagine Sage tolerating such things from strange children. Her own she lived with might be a different story, as she readily allows any of the household to boop her on the nose, hug, kiss, pick her up, hold her tail, etc. But I wouldn't trust her in a therapy dog setting, as she needs to have a certain level of comfort with a person before they're allowed to touch her that freely, and therapy dogs need to be very stranger-tolerant.

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Stranger Tolerance vs. Service Dog Potential

Sage has fantastic manners in public, and sits quietly and does well in very crowded, busy, or unusual settings with me. However, this is with the assumption that she is "invisible." Service dogs are ideally an "invisible" support device to be there when a person needs their assistance. She does this wonderfully. The problem is when people don't treat her as invisible and assume well-behaved, well-trained and good manners means they're available to everyone to interact with. She does not like strangers touching her, reaching out to touch her, or staring at her. As soon as they break that "invisibility" barrier, she gets anxious and may bark at someone. But as long as people ignore her, she can have kids falling on her, shopping carts and wheelchairs nearly rolling over her tail, navigate through crowds, and doesn't have a problem with it, as long as people ignore her. A service dog is not a therapy dog.

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With more dogs in public and using visits to the hardware store as an excuse to "socialize" their dogs, people are assuming all dogs are friendly and want to be pet. Someone may claim Sage is not well-socialized because she doesn't have a goofy Doug-the-dog "I want to be everybody's friend" nature. Socialization means they can handle change and different scenarios and people without flipping out, not that they're everybody's friend. There are plenty of dogs who love people but would be a complete menace inside a store or out in public. The two are not interchangeable.

 

Sage is very cool, calm, and collected in public - but aloof. I tell people it's like meeting a person for the first time. If you're a doctor or phlebotomist or dentist with business with me, I'll let you touch me and do what you need to do, and she'll ignore you. But if you're a random person on the street who wants to reach out and touch my head... that's no more acceptable to me (the human) as it is to her. Buy a girl a drink first! That's pretty much where she stands with strangers and visitors. She needs to have met you a couple times and be ok with you touching her rather than random people walking up and trying to touch her.

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Barking

My Aussies have all had a rather deep/intimidating bark when they wanted to be heard. Even the female had a very masculine bark. My English Shepherd, however, has more of a collie yodel like the sheltie I had as a kid. Higher pitched, but she also quiets down quickly or will just growl out the window. She can get a bit screetchy if you let her. She doesn't so much with me or our housemate, but my boyfriend - you'd think he was stepping on her and murdering her when it's time to visit the mailbox because he doesn't discourage it, and *routine!* The trip to the mailbox is a big deal to her. But she's generally quiet for the rest of us because she knows we don't like it.

I have never used a bark-collar of any sort with Sage. I'm starting to be of the mind that a bark collar just trains them to bark more. I simply worked on praising her when she stopped barking and got quiet and turned it into a "quiet" command. She generally will quiet down on command, or simply switch to soft growling, whereas my last two Aussies (trained with bark collars) just like to hear themselves bark and won't shut up on command, carrying on and on and on and... *sigh*. My first Aussie didn't have a bark collar until much later, and thus(?) learned the command for quiet before the bark collar came into play. I suspect the bark collar is just reinforcing their opinion that something is negative and needs to be barked at, because the more they bark, the worse it gets! Basically bark collars are simply reinforcing "learned helplessness."

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Eagerness to Please

Sage is a very "soft" dog in that she doesn't take much correction and is very eager to please. She simply wants to be good. A stern word will hold huge weight, and I have to be careful (and instruct others) to be very neutral-toned in their corrections, as big voices or anger only seems to traumatize her. Example: As a puppy learning/testing boundaries, she knew she was allowed to play with dog toys, and we'd praise her for playing with dog-toys. One night, she dragged the moose draft-stopper in with the intent of "playing with it," and all I had to so was say in a mildly displeased tone, "That's not yours..." she dropped it and never bothered it again, because that's all it took with her.

One of her favorite "tricks" or "tasks" is fetching my shoes for me. I never once needed to use a clicker or treats to train it, as she just liked how excited I would get when she would bring a shoe to me on command. To teach her to only get them on command, however, I had to take the shoe from her when she brought it unprompted and put it back, ignoring her and not praising. And I had to use my "that's not a toy" voice when she wanted to run around with it. She quickly learned shoes are not for chewing, playing, or a dog toy, but only for fetching on command when Janis asked it. And there are always two shoes. One, two, praises, and we're done. There's no racing around with it, no throwing and playing fetch, just a routine task she now knows. Interestingly, after licking the empty ice-cream carton, I've also taught her to bring me the ice-cream carton when she's done licking it (and the lid). She's already had the reward of ice-cream - all she gets for this extra bit is a pat on the head and an excited "good girl!" from me.

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My Aussies have run the gamut of "soft" to "hard" in how sensitive they were to correction. They all want to work for you very much, but tend to be very mercenary about it, and far more likely to ignore us when something isn't suitable to them. My English Shepherd is also very intuitive about things, and catches on to routines fairly quickly. The Aussies are better at to the letter precision training. They will do something like obedience heeling right by your side stop-on-a-dime, navigate through a course kind of training, but the English Shepherds are better at *intent* training. English Shepherds are very good chore-dogs around small farms and can be sent off to do the day's activities pretty much on their own, because they know what the intent is, whereas the Aussies seem to need you standing there telling them to go left, right, down, etc. I guess the term I'm looking for is autonomy. This can be a good and a bad thing, depending on what you want to use them for.

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Consider English Shepherds are more for daily small-acre homestead chores (routines) and Aussies and Border Collies are more like a remote-controlled shepherd you can send out in rough terrain and over distance to gather or move large herds. They're very different jobs. While there is certainly overlap, as an owner, I feel it's a difference between the small-acre "have to live indoors with them" versatility of an English Shepherd vs. the "this dog needs to be outside running all day every day and gathering large flocks of sheep and cattle."

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Grooming

I'm rather enjoying Sage's short coat vs. my show-Aussie who just dumps hair EVERYWHERE. He also has manscaping-dingleberry issues, and I was just commenting today after he nearly came in the door with an entire turd hanging off his butt that Sage has never ONCE had ANYTHING stuck to her. She's got longish hair around her ruff/collar and breeches/tail, but she still has a "teflon coat" which is incredibly easy to manage. My first Aussie from working-lines had more of this sort of teflon coat, and was fairly easy to manage, but he still did shed a fair amount and required regular grooming to keep from getting knotted up.

 

When Aussies are advertised as having a "low maintenance coat," they don't mean they don't shed. It means you don't need to shave them down regularly like a poodle, and they ideally should stay clean with dirt and stuff falling off them. After all, your cowboys and shepherds out on the trail in a saddle-pack tent aren't going to sit there around the campfire grooming a dog. The dog's coat needs to be all-weather and take care of itself for the most part. That's what "low-maintenance" means. But Aussies shed a ton and I'm sure a male English Shepherd would need more grooming than Sage as well, as boys are just hairier.

 

The other consideration is ticks. I live in Massachusetts. I'm pretty sure the entire country if not world knows that means I live in Lyme-disease central and stepping out the backdoor means the possibility of coming back covered in ticks the two seconds you were out there. Sage's short coat has made it easy to spot ticks crawling around before they attach. My poor Aussies however, no matter how closely I look over them over and how much I pet them, They can have a tick attached and feeding and I won't know it until they're the size of a grape, because there's just too much hair to feel through.
 

Focus

Sage is fantastic at frisbee. She'll play ad nauseum unless you tell her the game's done, and then she's fine with that as well. But she always brings the frisbee back to me. Most of the Aussies would grow bored and at some point stop bringing it back and would start ignoring me when they'd grow bored of the game. On the flip side, I've had Aussies who were so into the game they would get injured and wouldn't let me know just so they could keep playing. I had one super-competitive Aussie who loved agility so much I didn't know she'd been running with a pulled groin muscle until she'd done so much damage to it she couldn't jump right anymore and was getting secondary (more noticeable) sprains and strains. I've found with every Aussie I've had, I have to enforce when something is "enough" just so they won't injure themselves, because they have no self-awareness.

Sage (my English Shepherd), however, will continue playing until you tell her you're done, and just takes it at face-value. She sometimes will tell me she wants to keep playing frisbee a few more throws, but she'll also tell me when she's tired of herding the sheep and needs a break to jump in the stock water-tank to cool off, and then is ready to go back to herding. But she's much better at self-monitoring her own needs. Some farmers may look at the Aussie who will continue working through injuries as a good thing (no trail cowboy/shepherd wants to carry a wimpy dog on his horse because he's got a boo-boo. You'd want them to keep going if they can and it's minor) but I'd much rather know something is off and she tell me so I can keep an eye on it. Aussies tend to hide injuries and weakness.

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Sheepdogs in Apartments/Urban areas

Neither breed is suitable for apartments. I hate to be discouraging, as I've lived in apartments with my first Aussie, and nearly got evicted due to the second. It's because I've lived with them in apartments and consider myself a reasonably responsible dog-trainer that I know what I'm talking about. These were not in particularly urban areas, either.

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• Finding dog-friendly housing in my budget was difficult.

• Neighbors would complain because even if he wasn't barking, he was running from window to window to see what was going on outside.

• Neighbors would complain that they were rattling around in their crate.

• Neighbors would complain when they'd run and play fetch, even if they were completely silent. Zoomies are a way of life for sheepdogs. My 12 year old Aussie was racing around like a nut even when she was dying of cancer.

• My Aussie got attacked by other dogs in the apartment(s) on at least 4 separate occasions, even though he was leashed and under my control, and the other dogs were supposedly as well.

• Housebreaking's a bitch when you live on the 4th floor.

• Whipworms and other grossness picked up from the communal bathroom

• Stranger danger! Especially when maintenance guys need to enter your apartment. Crated or not, your dog is going to develop a complex about every little sound/visitor while you're away, and these are guardian breeds.

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Final Thoughts on the Two Breeds

If you look at the history of Australian Shepherds vs. English Shepherds, you can see a lot of their personality traits defined by their history. Australian Shepherds were largely cattle-dogs (despite their name) derived from Spanish sheepdogs. They herd by using their body to push and shove you around, and are big and bullish. Teak (my Aussie's) nickname is Ferdinand because he'll clobber you with his big lion-paws and sniffs flowers. He's very much a lover and not a fighter, but he's also a giant doorstop at times. (I literally almost went over backwards the other day because he lay down behind my feet, and I stepped back, and he couldn't be bothered to move). The great part of Aussies (in my experience) is like a Taurus, it really takes quite a bit to work up their ire. While they're very active, they tend to be very laid-back in personality, and don't let much bother them. This can mean praise and correction though, too.

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Aussies were also rodeo-clown-dogs essentially doing circus-tricks and feats of athletics for crowds. So every Aussie I've had was a diva who loved to perform for people and learn a million tricks, and is excellent at being "cute" and smiling for the camera. (Just remember unless you're doing circus tricks all day long, they can get bored/destructive though).

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English Shepherds were more historically homestead and pioneer dogs. They are meant to herd a variety of animals, and Sage has proven to not be bothered at all by chickens, ducks, geese, cows, sheep, goats, and pigs. To her, this is what she's meant to do in life. Her M.O. is to have a routine of chores cleaning chicken coops, rounding them up for the night, moving sheep from one pen to another, pushing stubborn cows to the milking shed, and ratting the corn crib. She's not meant for thousand-mile cattle-drives or gathering mountain sheep on the common grazelands. She thrives on getting shoes so we can go out, going to Starbucks, visiting the doctor, and going to the mailbox. Routines and daily chores. Oh, and herding a stubborn Aussie into the house at bedtime when he'd rather ignore us and sniff flowers.

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Q: Ok, that's a lot of negatives, but does Sage have any good attributes?

A: Of course! She's a fantastic dog and I love her so much. This is why whether or not I breed her, I'm incredibly happy with the dog I have. She's sweet, affectionate, loves to cuddle (she's a hugger, not a french-kisser like the Aussies), does everything I ask her to without any fight, I don't worry about her in public, she seems to have a hearty constitution, and she's an all-around good "serious" dog. I'm just trying to be honest about the various reasons I may have hesitations with some homes and applications I get. You may sound like a very nice home for a dog - just not one of her dogs, and these are the reasons emphasizing why, and what I've observed living with her for the past two years.

 

I also get a lot of questions about how English Shepherds compare to Aussies, as nobody's heard of an English Shepherd, as the tri-colored English Shepherds especially look like Aussies. They are definitely not the same breed though. My personal feeling is that I was looking into a breed other than Australian Shepherds feeling like as I get older I just don't have the energy to do battle with Aussies anymore. i.e. they're super friendly, but you need to have energy to match them. Even my couch-potato Aussie is always going in mind, if not body compared to my English Shepherd.

 

It's the difference between Robin Williams (Aussies) and George Carlin (English Shepherds), I think. Aussies may be fun if you have small children and an active household that likes to include their dog in things and young energetic parents who won't notice a bit of exuberance, but I think of English Shepherds as being more an empty-nester breed for people who still want an intelligent companion to be their buddy without all the "nonsense."