Saturday afternoon we handed a puppy across the curb at Terminal 2, drove home with an empty crate rattling in the back, and walked into a house that was, for the first time since the early hours of May 26, completely quiet.
All eight puppies of the Game On litter have gone to their new homes.
Nine weeks and change. Eight puppies, whelped between 12:12 and 2:59 in the morning, weighed every day, chipped, DNA-tested, eye-examined, temperament-tested, and then handed one at a time across a doorway into the arms of the people who had been waiting for them. Go-home days ran from Tuesday, July 28 through Saturday, August 1 — Elizabethton to Manhattan, Oak Park to Woburn.
Six doorways, a parking lot, and an airport curb
Every one of these photographs is the same moment, eight times over: the minute a puppy stops being ours and starts being theirs. Six of them happened in our doorway. One happened in a parking lot — we were at our veterinarian’s office in Washington collecting the health certificate Berkley needed to fly, and Willow’s family, who live in town, simply met us there and took her home from the lot. The eighth happened at Lambert: we walked Berkley into Terminal 2 and handed him to his owner at the curb for the flight to Boston. It is the best day of the whole nine weeks and the hardest one, and it is over very quickly.
Where they landed
We keep a map every litter, partly because it is fun and partly because it is an honest picture of what a small breeding program actually is: a handful of puppies, scattered across a lot of miles, living in homes we will never fully see.
The families are the whole point
We want to say something here that does not get said often enough, and we mean it plainly.
A breeder can do everything right — pick the pairing carefully, test both parents, run ENS and Puppy Culture from day three, do the eye exams and the DNA and the temperament testing — and none of it matters if the puppy lands in the wrong home. The last and most important thing that happens to a puppy is not anything we do. It is the family who takes it.
The eight families above found us for eight different reasons. Some wanted a companion — a dog on the couch, a dog on the trail, a dog to be part of an ordinary week. One is working toward therapy visits. Others are pointed at conformation, rally, disc, dock diving, barn hunt. Some of these puppies went to homes that already knew exactly what a Springer’s day looks like; others are welcoming their first.
None of those homes outranks any other. We want to be direct about that, because prospective buyers sometimes apologize to us — “we are not going to show her, we just want a family dog” — as though the pet home were the consolation prize. It is not. A dog who spends fifteen years being adored in a living room has had a complete and successful life. So has one who titles. What all eight of these families have in common is not ambition; it is that they went looking for a well-bred, health-tested, thoughtfully-raised dog and were willing to wait for one. That is the qualification. Everything after that is preference.
What we ask of a home is the same either way: keep the dog for its life, feed it well, train it kindly, take it to the vet, and call us if anything ever goes sideways. Our contract says a Three Doves dog comes back to us before it ever goes anywhere else. That door does not close.
The part that starts long before the puppies
People sometimes assume health testing is something you do to a litter. It is not. By the time there are puppies on the ground, the important decisions have already been made. Health testing is something you do to the parents, years earlier, and then live with the answer.
Both parents of this litter hold a CHIC number, issued by the Orthopedic Foundation for Animals when a dog has completed the health screenings the parent breed club asks for — with the results published publicly whether or not they are flattering. That last part matters. Anyone can say “health tested.” A CHIC number means the results are on the open record, under the dog’s name, for anyone to look up.
BlazE — CH Vinewood Three Doves Plays With Fire RA BCAT THDX DS DJ CGC TKN FITB — OFA CHIC #208715. Hips Good, elbows Normal, eyes Normal on his CAER exam, and Carrier for PRA-cord1.
Etta — Three Dove’s At Last RN BCAT DS CGC TKI FITB — OFA CHIC #214786. Hips Good, elbows Normal, eyes Normal, and Clear for PRA-cord1.
You will notice we published that BlazE is a carrier. We are not hiding it, and it is not a problem — it is the exact reason the testing exists. PRA-cord1 is the form of progressive retinal atrophy that turns up in Springers, and it is recessive: a dog needs two copies of the mutation to go blind. A carrier has one copy, sees perfectly, and will never develop the disease — but bred to another carrier, roughly a quarter of the puppies would eventually lose their sight.
Etta is Clear. Carrier bred to Clear cannot produce an affected puppy — every puppy inherits at least one normal copy, guaranteed. That is not optimism, it is arithmetic. Before DNA testing existed, breeders had no way to see this coming; they found out years later, when someone’s young dog started bumping into furniture in dim light. We know instead. That is the whole point of the test, and it is why we would rather breed a tested carrier to a tested clear dog than breed two untested dogs and hope.
And then every puppy, individually
Screening the parents tells you what is likely. Testing the puppies tells you what is true. Every one of these eight went home with its own paperwork:
- PRA-cord1 DNA test — sent to GenSol Diagnostics. All eight came back Clear.
- CAER eye exam — every puppy examined individually by Dr. Reuben Merideth, DACVO, of Animal Eye Associates. All eight Normal. This is a separate check from the DNA test, and it catches what genetics cannot: retinal dysplasia, juvenile cataracts, distichiasis, persistent pupillary membranes.
- Microchip — placed and recorded, with the number on the go-home paperwork.
- Age-appropriate vaccinations and deworming, with the records to hand straight to their own veterinarian.
- Volhard Puppy Aptitude Test at 49 days — run by a neutral tester the puppies had never met, so the scores meant something.
- Pre-go-home wellness exam by our veterinarian at Franklin County Animal Medical Center.
- Individual AKC registration — every puppy registered by us, not left as a promise on a form.
Behind all of that sat the first eight weeks: Early Neurological Stimulation and Early Scent Introduction daily from day three, the full Puppy Culture protocol, and introductions to birds, water and gunfire — because bench-bred or not, these dogs come with the instincts, and it is better they meet all of it here, gently, than be surprised by it later.
Thank Etta first
We have ended nearly every post this litter with the same line, and we meant it every time. Etta grew them, fed them, cleaned them, refereed them and weaned them, and she did all of it without ever being asked.
One of the families brought her a present on go-home day. She has not put it down since.
To Layla’s, Maggie’s, Bogey’s, Hank’s, Willow’s, Dutchie’s, Zelda’s and Berkley’s people: thank you for driving, flying, waiting, filling out the forms, answering our questions, and choosing to do this the slow way. Send pictures. We are not exaggerating when we say we want all of them.
What is next: BlazE × Aster, this fall
The puppy room will not stay quiet long.
We are planning a BlazE × Aster litter for this fall. Aster is Etta’s sister — Int. CH Three-Doves Aster Star Of The Field RE BCAT THDX CGC FITB, OFA CHIC #200316, hips Good, elbows Good, eyes Normal, and Clear for PRA-cord1. She is also our therapy dog, and if you have met her you already know what that says about her temperament. Bred to BlazE, we expect an all liver-and-white litter — a different look from Game On, which gave us five liver-and-white and three black-and-white.
The breeding date, the whelp window and when puppies would be ready are not set yet, and we will post them here as soon as they are. For now this is just the news: it is happening, and we are looking forward to it.
Eight puppies in five days — six out the front door, one in a parking lot, and one through airport security. Somewhere out there this evening, eight families are figuring out where the crate goes.
— Albert & Terra
Three Doves Performance Dogs — AKC Breeder of Merit, English Springer Spaniel
www.three-doves.com · info@three-doves.com
