Feature  Daisy & Devlin's Puppies

Sheltie Love
Shetland Sheepdog

If you have found this page, I'm going to assume that you LOVE the Shetland Sheepdog breed.  Shelties (as the are commonly called) are a medium size work dog, breed in Scotland to tend sheep in the rocky country landscape.  Shelties are a fast, agile and highly intelligent.

I grew up in a non-pet home.  Both of my parents had grown up with pets in their parents homes, but did not want the work or mess of a pet in their own house.  

So it will probably not be surprising to you that not long after I setup my first household, that I was given a pet.  

That first pet, was a long hair, white kitten moved from state to state with me for 23 years.

As a child, I would have chosen a Collie (a Lassie dog).  After all, I am a product of the 50s television generation.  

Because of her Sheltie, Prince, I quickly came to appreciate the great attributes of the Shetland Sheep Dog breed and renewed my childhood desire for a dog.

Not too many more things are more devastating than a loss of a beloved pet.  But when we lost three pets (my 23 year old cat), her daughter (a 20 year old cat) and my wife's Sheltie (7 year old dog) all in one year, we decided to take a break from pets for a while.  That break lasted for a dozen years.  

However, it will be no surprise to any visitor to this web site, that when we finally chose to get a new pet, we decided to get a Sheltie.  However when we looked at the Sheltie breed, we saw a lot of small Shelties in the 20 to 25-lb range.  

I do not know whether smaller Shelties are the product of what breeders want as a breed or the pet owner want for a pet, but most Shelties are too small for our life style.

We would have preferred a Sable Sheltie because of it's Lassie-look, but we wanted a dog that was big enough to jump up into a full-size SUV and that we could take out on the hiking trail.  The smaller Sheltie's short legs simply make it hard for them to keep up on a 5-10 mile mountain hike.  So we ended up choosing a female Tri-Color whose parents were in the 35-lb range.

While the parents size do not guarantee the size that your puppy will be when fully grown, it is a good indicator.  And we were not disappointed when Daisy quickly grew to 35-lbs.

Her Sheltie blood-line is about two inches taller than the Shetland Sheepdog standard.

Daisy's tall, slender and long frame makes her a very agile dog that is able to out run me even when I'm in a flat out run with a 6-1/2 foot stride.  

Her longer legs and strength make it possible to jump up into our Ford Expedition without any help.

When we adopted Daisy, she was 5 months old.  Unfortunately, neither babies, nor puppies, come with an instruction manual.  And if you are typical, you tend to spoil both.  

This was the case for Daisy.  As novice puppy owner, I spoiled her so that she ended up thinking that she is in charge of our household.

Of course, many times ignorance is bliss, (so in my case) I did not know that Shelties do not really like playing catch or swimming, so I blindly taught Daisy to do both.

Daisy now loves swimming in Lake Lanier with us, in spite of the heavy Sheltie coat and narrow chest cavity that makes it hard for he to maintain boyancy.

From the outset, I wanted to breed Daisy so that she could have a litter of puppies.  I guess this was because my long hair, white cat, made one great escape and ended up having a litter of kittens.  The kitten litter was such a great experience.

My reason for breeding Daisy were two fold:

1. I believe this will make her a better dog (even though many experts disagree),  

2. I wanted other Sheltie Lovers to have the opportunity to enjoy the larger sized Sheltie that many breeders do not raise.

So when Daisy reached the age of 2 years, I began looking for a sire that would compliment Daisy's strengths and weaknesses.

It took about 8 months and then we found Devlin of Buckcreek available for adoption.

Since  Devlin had been used as a stud dog by a local breeder, we knew that he would make beautiful puppies.  He is a beautiful Mahogany Sable with a reserve, but very stable, personality.  He weights 35-lbs, but is more the standard height and build of seen in Sables.

Because Devlin was kept in a outside "run", he had never been a house dog.  It was unclear that he had ever been fully house broken, so we were not sure what kind of work we might be in for as we tried to transition him to a house dog.  However, from the outset, it was clear that Devlin loved Daisy.  From their first meeting, he followed her everywhere.  So we adopted Devlin and relied on the inherent intelligence of this breed (that even at 6 years old) he would be trainable.

In just two months, Devlin transitioned to not only house dog, but loving family member.  Surprisingly we never had any training problems and he has been a complete joy in our life.  

From the first day I watched Devlin observe our interaction with Daisy and watched him over come his reserve nature, so that he could be a part of our family.  It has bee a great pleasure to simply provide him a loving and stable family situation and watch him reprogram himself into becoming a house dog and loving family member.

I think this says a lot for the intelligence of this breed and the quality of this dog.  Of course, he turned out to be quite the "stud" as Daisy's first litter consisted of 9 puppies!

Click here, to read about their puppies.