Thursday, November 19, 2015

Blazie/MC Family Photos!

Our Breed Founder, Tina Barber, would create a litter collage for each of her breedings. In the collage she would place family members and relatives that she felt the pups might grow up to resemble. I used to love looking at those, so we've made it a tradition for each prospective breeding to do collages of our own. :)

Without further ado...meet the family!

The photos above feature relatives that we think these pups might look like as adults. You'll see an equal number of plush and smooth coats, from grey sables like Nana, Ginger, Piston, and Acer to golden and brown sables like Chester, Leo, and Aslan. We could also get duals like MC himself or very dark duals like Sammy!

We're expecting a real range of temperaments in this litter, from medium-soft through medium to potentially medium-hard. Both Blazie and MC had all of these temperaments show up in their own litter mates. Both parents have a drive to please and that makes for an easily-trained dog. We may get a couch potato or two (it's in the genes) but these pups will probably fall into the range where they're very happy to get up and go but also have an "off switch."

Stay tuned for an update next week after the ultrasound--and please join us in crossing fingers, paws and tails for puppies!

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Meet the Parents!

Welcome to our litter blog for our (hopefully) upcoming Blazie/MC litter! We thought you might like to start out by meeting the prospective parents. :)

ZION'S MIDNIGHT MISCHIEF, AKA "MC"

The stud for our litter will be the extremely handsome MC! MC is full brother to LEO who visitors to the Sparta Shilohs website will be very familiar with. Like Leo, MC is a big, solid boy with heavy bone, beautiful movement, and a gorgeous head with bright amber eyes in a striking dark face.

MC has an extremely stable temperament, having scored 98 out of 100 on his temperament test. He has a strong herding drive, earning rave reviews from his herding evaluators and proving that this instinct still remains in the Shiloh. MC exemplifies what many would consider the ideal shepherd: confident, fearless, somewhat aloof with strangers but a loving goofball with his family. I especially love the photos of MC with his kids.

Can't forget the goofball MC photo...

Or the young MC photos! MC at 8 weeks, around 16 weeks, and I think around one year. :)

MC's color is what we call a dark black-and-tan dual (where the traditional "saddle" marking becomes more of a blanket). We are likely to get pups of this color in this mating.

Enough studliness...we'd like you to meet Blazie!

CH SPARTA'S BLAZE OF GLORY, AKA "BLAZIE"

Blazie is the girl we kept from our 2012 Kyrie/Piston litter. She's a smooth-coated grey sable and also a Champion show dog! As you can see her coloring is very "wolfy". She's a tall girl, over 28" at the shoulder, the ideal height range for the Shiloh Shepherd female. Blaze is a real sweetheart and loves people. Where MC is more bonded to his family, Blaze will go up to strangers on the street for petting. Thanks to her sister Benelli and brother Aslan's families, she's also very good with kids!

Here are some of my favorite casual photos of Blazie. She's at home lying on the couch with a bone to chew, but she's also extremely athletic and she's a fiend for frisbee! She'll jump in the air to catch them and seldom misses!

Blazie meeting the topiary shepherd at Purina Farms...

Alert Blazie, Quizzical Blazie, and Smiling Blazie!

And, finally, the eye of the Blazie! You'll want to keep an eye on this blog for updates, too--ultrasound in five weeks or so, to hopefully confirm pregnancy! Thanks for reading, all!!