At Whistling Ridge, we take great pride in our breeding program and our results. Our feedback is consistently positive, and we strive to constantly improve on every front. One of the greatest compliments we receive is from vets at the large clinic we attend. Three have said when they are ready to get a(nother) dog, they will be coming to us because we constantly produce excellent quality. And we often hear the same from our adoptive families. In fact, we have numerous families who have multiple dogs from us. Nothing makes us feel better that to get this kind of feedback from our vets and our adoptive families. Last week, one customer-turned-personal-friend sent us photos of her two dogs from us, and her friends two dogs they were puppysitting. for a bit over a week. We communicated through the week, as little challenges came with the territory of four dogs in one house. It was impressive! The dogs had a blast, and the people came through it loving dogs even more. What more can one ask for? (It brings  Vinyl Cafe' "Man and Beast - Arthur the Dog & Dave the Dog Walker" to mind. Particularly Dave the Dog Walker). 

 

Bringing a puppy home is no small thing. When an adoptive family chooses us, we do not take it lightly. Our goal is always to produce the healthiest puppies possible, and have them as advanced in training as possible, and well socialized before they leave. At about 4-5 weeks, we begin training them to do their potty business outside. By 6-7 weeks, we begin crate training. By the time  they leave for their new homes, usually between 8 and 12 weeks, they are well on the way to doing their business outside, and they sleep through the night in crates. Most feedback is that the pups had no indoor accidents, or very few, and most sleep through the night from the start, We love updates from our families. The feedback is encouraging and reminds us that your success, is our success. 

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Our puppies come with a ONE YEAR GENETIC HEALTH guarantee. We also offer a 72 hour guarantee, should some grave illness befall our puppies after they leave. We are exceptionally careful with our litter health, and have been fortunate to never have had disease, and do everything in our power to keep it that way. We have high confidence in the quality of our puppies, in part because they are health tested for all breed-specific conditions plus over 250 other other conditions, to help further research. The more we learn, the higher quality we can breed. The other reason we have confidence is because we keep our own offspring for our breeding program, so we know first hand their quality. We have two separate lines so that we are always able to produce our own puppies for our program. We never in-breed, and make sure to keep our females and males in homes away from each other to prevent risk of unplanned pregnancy or, worse, an inbred litter. To date, we have had no health issues with dogs in our breeding program, or their offspring. We want to keep it that way. Nothing is more important to us, from a breeding perspective, than the health of every puppy we bring into this world, along with breed standard. 

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We breed for quality of health and temperament, and to breed standards. When we choose pups to hold back for our program, we choose the calmest puppies. We only have dogs that meet breed standard in our breeding program, so our pups are also to breed standard. This makes it possible for us to keep any puppy that we see has the temperament we are looking for. Should that change, and a breeding pair produce pups outside of breed standard, we would remove the parent(s) from our program). There is always a range of temperaments to choose from, but they are all highly trainable, and none that are 'over the top.' If a pair produced pups that were not of quality we would want to keep, we would remove them from our program. We are in the process of linking our breed specific health tests to our dogs bio for potential customers to access. 

 

Our commitment is to produce the best quality of Mini American Shepherds possible. We stay available for the life of the pup, to support our adoptive families in any way possible. We have also written a pamphlet to help with the transition process, as puppies settle into their new homes. While the transition is generally smooth, the occasional puppy has a harder time. We stay present and engaged, to help with that transition. (While distance doesn't always allow, we've even made house calls to demonstrate practical tips). At the end of the day, our only success is the success of our adoptive families. 

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We are here to serve you, above all. We welcome questions. And we love when people come to