March 28, 2018  LABRADOR RETRIEVER IS THE MOST POPULAR BREED FOR THE 27TH YEAR IN A EOW

 New York, NY - The Labrador Retriever has done it again. The American Kennel Club (AKC®) announced today that the intelligent, family friendly breed holds tight to the number one spot on the most popular list for a record-breaking 27th consecutive year, continuing the longest reign as the nation’s top dog in AKC history.






                         

(English Lab)                                                                                 


These are the dogs we love and trust with our precious ones...









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https://youtu.be/JA8VJh0UJtg

(American Lab)


Christmas 2022; we are now expecting grand #18!

Today, life is still so very sweet, and we truly love our young adults, teens and now grands, but things were sure a bit simpler back then.

And for anyone wondering... (we get asked all the time:) 
...we are not Mormon or Catholic; though we have beautiful, wonderful, wonderful friends who are.
We're just crazy Christians who love kids and dogs!   

Throw(waaaay)back to 2006

Oct 2015 - I know, this news really has nothing to do with raising wonderful pups, but it's still fun to share! 
Our four youngest daughters just sang The National Anthem at the last SF Giants game on 10/4/2015! (and then again May 2016 and July 2017)
They sent us this video; click here to hear them:  https://sfgiants.app.box.com/s/pplc5pi262cjdarjw317jj27qex1qiz2.













Here's Ruger again a year later with our first Grandson.

Dewey is the only dog that lives at our house.  He travels with us and accompanies me off-leash around our beloved neighborhood. Since 2008, my oldest son and I have bought, restored, rented-out, managed and maintained vintage 1920-30's bungalows and cottages in desperate need of renovation and Dewey is always there to help:).  My hope is that a few of our adult children will someday live in this wonderful neighborhood with their families and continue to help breed these beautiful dogs with their kids.





Fall 2013:  Above are Ruger and Saydee; both Guardians Pups/Dogs who recently stayed with us while their families were out of town.
The pictures capture a typical day at our place; it's all about swimming and a serious, ongoing game of  "keep-away".  
Though they are both just under a year old in these pictures, they pretty much epitomize what we are currently trying to breed.   
They are also a bit small for Labs; Ruger is just 75 lbs and Saydee is 60.  They will both fill out a bit as they mature but they will never be big dogs.  
For those wanting a larger Lab, we do offer those occasionally also, though we no longer breed the 100+ lb dogs.



Spring 2023. We recently had a family function and we brought 12.5 yr old Dewey and our potential new Harley pup "Bluey" :)

(Sorry, so back to our dogs:)  Our goal is to produce a healthy, well-mannered, highly intelligent, beautiful family dog from excellent lines that is somewhat athletic and simply a delight to own.  Frankly, I don't breed anything I wouldn't want to live with.  Though a wonderful pedigree certainly isn't everything, we are striving to include champion stock in all our breedings.  I truly appreciate the time, thought, genetic testing and commitment most reputable breeders from year's past put into breeding their dogs and hope to build on that commitment and important healthy breed standard.  We strive to offer the same "big breeder" quality, but without the use of kennels.  We feel strongly that each and every mama dog we breed deserves a real home where she is loved, cherished and never over-bred. 

Years ago, we had just a couple litters annually, and generally not more than one litter at a time.  However, the wonderful pure English lines that we now breed seem to consistently have smaller litters; usually only 5-7 pups at a time.  Long gone are the days of 12-14 pup litters the Field/American Labs produced. (I had a mentor tell me that would happen if we got away from breeding the American lines and it did!).  Anyway, that means in order to keep up with the demand (and we aren't doing very well currently) we are having more litters but about the same number of pups.  I think I've come up with a creative and acceptable, maybe even superior way to have more litters at a time but still keep the integrity of our unique breeding philosophy.  Now when we are expecting more than one litter at about the same time, we have began to pay our guardian families to nurture their own dog's pups!  I whelp the litter but they handle and actually nurture each one through
the daily Early Neurological Stimulation mentioned above.  Then when the pups reach 3-4 weeks old, they come back to our place with their mama for litter box training, we start them on solid food, and provide a gentle, slow weaning.  Regardless of who hand-raises the litter, we are committed to giving our mama dogs and each of their pups our very best care and training. 

Years ago we preferred a blend of English and American Labs, however, we have started to breed all English litters now and have completely moved away from American (Field) pups as they tend to have more energy than the typical family wants to deal with.  Unless you're a big-time hunter, we think you'll be much happier with these mild-mannered English Labs.  We're currently breeding light yellow (scream) with heavy black pigment, medium-length legs, blocky heads, shorter snouts, large bone, big barrel chests, otter-type tails and the kindest most-expressive eyes; because of the dark-pigment they look as though they have perfectly applied eyeliner :)

                                   May 2010 - Our oldest daughter's wedding  || Our youngest son with Bailey the ring-bearing dog.              

                              We had fun taking the silly photo in the middle.  So yes... back then it was "one kid down; just seven to go".

July 2017:  all the Grands with 4 week old Cosette/Murphy Pups.       They were born the same day as youngest grand daughter bottom right.

We are the Langley's; once "just" a family of 10; today (07/23) there are almost 34 of us!  The six oldest are now married, and we are expecting grandchild #18!  Our large family is getting even larger!  

The above photo was taken at our daughter's wedding back in March 2017 when there was only 22 of us! Maybe you noticed our two "tanner" kids? Apparently, Eight was NOT Enough:)  Not sure how long we will have them, but we feel blessed that they are part of our family at this point. They LOVE dogs and are learning to train and start our pups too.

About Us and Our Dogs


Christmas 2018   can you find the two newest and smallest grandbabes?

For those interested, here's more 'before and afters' of our most recent project...

https://youtu.be/tCXRMI7CBRA   https://youtu.be/KnDousDPAV8

A friend recorded and sent me the second youtube video; I got her permission to share it here.  You can see and hear all four girls a bit better than in my video. We actually got a call just as we were exiting the Bay Bridge saying that they wanted the National Anthem sang BEFORE Jeremy Affeldt's ceremony now.  It was already going to be a bit tight because once the girls found out he was being honored, they wanted to get jerseys customized with his name and number there at ATT Park's Dugout Store as he is their favorite!  They so badly wanted to meet Jeremy but no one could figure out how to make it happen.  It wasn't until we watched the end of this video that we realized just how close they were to crossing paths.  18 months later they got another chance; Jeremy Affeldt came to speak in our home town.  

 

Summer 2015 

Grands and  pups

Congratulations on finding our website.  We do not advertise or pay extra to get more exposure or hits on our site.  It's really just here for information; to keep those wanting a pup up-to-speed with the latest news and pictures. We primarily place our pups by word of mouth; usually it's to those who have met our dogs and their owner's somewhere.  In fact, I have removed all the old notes of recommendation and references as I'm thinking you've probably already heard them and that's why you're here.                                                                     

In the Spring of 2004 we had our very first litter of Yellow Labrador Retrievers.  We all so enjoyed the process of raising and nurturing pups! We thought our first Lab Bella was an extra special dog, but when we began to get great feedback from her pup's owners, we knew we'd breed again.  It's turned into a most fun hobby and now serious business for the whole family!  We love to travel with our kids (yes, we used to take all of them and now as many as can join us) and since they do much of the hard, hard work hand-raising pups entails, we use the funds to visit incredible places all over the world.  I love the wonderful challenge of finding and breeding only the best, most beautiful healthy dogs out there and yes, I'm sort of a perfectionist.  In fact, my hope and plan is to have a line of dogs good enough for my kids and their families to breed, hand-raise and train someday for YOUR kids and their families!  I think now that we are training pups as well, my children are also getting a wonderful jump start on a small aspect of parenting their own future kids;  lots of practice in patience and proactive training and nurture before placing them.  We call these Started Pups.                                                                                                                  

The pups are whelped (born) right in our Great Room and hand-raised as part of our family.  All of our kids have always schooled at home, so it's not unusual to find them studying with a pup in their lap.  We hope the love, attention and training we give them in the first several weeks of life will get them off to the great start necessary to be a cherished, healthy member of your family for many years to come.  In fact, we incorporate Super Dog Early Neurological Stimulation into the handling of the pups.  Not because we are after dogs with better performance per se, but because it's proven to produce:
1. Improved cardio vascular performance (heart rate)
2. Stronger heart beats
3. Stronger adrenal glands
4. More tolerance to stress  
5. Greater resistance to disease.
Read more about it at:  http://www.kitsapcanine.com/articles/SuperDog.pdf
Or watch this short YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G31N_gmUkE0

We also patiently and diligently nurture and work with each one as they grow; attempting to keep them from developing bad habits their new family will have to someday undo.  Our litters are trained to eliminate on wood shavings in a large box by 5 weeks; which makes house and crate training so much easier; they learn from the start that clean bedding is to sleep on, flooring is where we play and there's that other place to eliminate.  We also know many of you have little ones as we do, so we gently discourage them to not bite or gnaw on human hands.  This doesn't hurt real bad when they're little, but it certainly will as they get bigger and stronger.  

Each of our potential parent dogs have had their hips and elbows x-rayed for dysplasia after their first birthday.  Once they are two years, most become certified through O.F.A.  Each dog we breed has been deemed at least good, but some are excellent!  We recently passed on a most gorgeous girl because one of her hips were not as tight as I like to see them in the x-rays.  The vet mentioned that some, maybe most breeders would have bred her anyway since that hip was not bad.  In fact a big breeder of very nice dogs told me once that she does breed dogs who's hips come back "fair".  She says, "Hey, fair is fair... they're not poor, so I breed."  Needless to say, I no longer use her stud dogs.  I am committed to only breeding the very best and sometimes that means spaying instead of breeding.  We find breeding (and now starting/training) great dogs very rewarding and as long as each pup ends-up in an exceptional home, we will continue to improve our pe
digree with superior stock. We adore and are committed to bettering the amazing Labrador Retriever breed. 
  
We now DNA testi for the following diseases:  (and all dogs we breed are CLEAR)
*Hereditary Nasal Parakeratosis:  an autosomal-recessive genetic disease of Labrador Retrievers characterized by thickening and depigmentation of the nasal planum.
*Exercise Induced Collapse: a genetic syndrome, predominantly occurring in mixed breed dogs related to several retriever breeds.
*Centronuclear Myopathy: is an autosomal-recessive genetic disease of dogs characterized by early-onset muscular atrophy.
*Degenerative Myelopathy: is a devastating degenerative disease of the spinal cord that can progress rapidly and cause weakness in the hind limbs and eventually paraplegia among genotypically affected dogs.
*Hyperuricosuria:  is an autosomal recessive genetic urinary disease characterized by urate urolithiasis and cystitis.
*Cystinuria:  an autosomal recessive disorder that affects a dog's ability to filter cystine out of urine.
*PRA-prcd: a group of diseases that cause the retina of the eye to degenerate slowly over time.                                               .