Valiant Shilohs

09/22/2026

I found it fascinating how the first year of running my dog daycare facility, I required Bordetella, & exactly half of my pack got sick with kennel cough. After that I stopped requiring it & for the next 5yrs I only saw a few more minor cases. Meanwhile all the neighboring facilities that continued to require Bordetella battled incessant kennel cough outbreaks.

Access Denied! If you feel like you can't take your dog anywhere without someone asking if your dog has the kennel cough vaccine, you need to read this!

09/01/2026

100% THIS!! This is why my dogs are easy to live with & respectful in public… not because they were born that way, but because I set them up for success from the beginning 🐾

TRAIN BEFORE YOU HAVE TO FIX.

One of the biggest mistakes I see dog owners make is waiting until there’s a problem to start training.

Pulling becomes unbearable.
Recall disappears.
Jumping isn’t cute anymore.
Reactivity starts showing up.
The teenage phase hits HARD.

And then we start looking for training.

But training doesn’t have to begin because something went wrong.

Build the foundation before you need it.

Teach your puppy how to engage with you.
Teach them how to settle.
Teach leash skills before they’re strong enough to drag you.
Build recall before you want off-leash freedom.
Practice neutrality before distractions become a battle.
Create structure, boundaries and expectations while they’re young.

Early training isn’t about creating a perfect puppy.

It’s about giving your dog the skills they’ll need for the life you want to live together.

Spend more time building and less time fixing.

A strong foundation now can save you months of frustration later.

08/30/2026

As we near the beginning of Civil’s breeding career, I am continually humbled at the learning curve that is all things responsible breeding.

I receive almost daily inquiries asking if we’ve chosen our stud for Civil’s first litter yet, & although I’m just as eager to be able to make that announcement, it takes a village to come to such a decision!

I am not only picky about temperament & phenotype, taking care to pair Civil to a stud that will complement & maintain a balance of traits, but the hours it takes to evaluate health data alone is daunting! It’s not just the sire’s health stats that matter, but also his parents, grandparents, siblings, progeny, & how those risks compare to known risks behind Civil.

The fact is, every pairing comes with risks, but we minimize those risks by being aware of them & taking care not to double up when possible. There are health risks we don’t yet have genetic testing for that can be silently carried for generations. Health testing gives us information to minimize potential risks.

Then there are genetic diversity aspects like internal relatedness, coefficient of inbreeding, & common vs. rare haplotypes. This is especially important in such a small breed gene pool where Shilohs are already more closely related than we’d like.

Civil’s UC Davis results show that while she has slightly higher than breed average internal relatedness, she carries diverse Dog Leukocyte Antigen class 1 & 2 haplotypes. DLA genes are involved in how the immune system recognizes & fights disease. 3 of Civil’s 4 haplotypes are considered rare in Shilohs.

Our goal will be to choose from studs with lower internal relatedness & differing haplotypes, along with utilizing Embark DNA tools to predict pairings with lower COI. Not all studs have DNA on file, so we may have to test Civil’s offspring to determine the baseline of how to best move the line forward in the next generation.

We want every generation to be better than the last, but I am understanding that it is often a process of tackling one thing at a time.