© Harmony Mountain Retrievers

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Sky and Noah are expecting a litter of pups on 9/8/2022 (scheduled to rehome 11/3/2022): We are expecting blacks, blues and silvers. We have 6 deposits on this planned litter, but are taking names for additional pups (her normal litter size is 7). NOTE: Airlines’ scheduling has made shipping impossible. That said, pups must be picked up at our home in Southern, UT or we can deliver the pups to you at the St. George Regional airport. * * * If you are wondering why you should choose one of our pups, please read our Why Us page. When selecting dogs for our breeding program, we consider the following, in order of importance to us: 1) Temperament; 2) Diversity/Health of the Lines; 3) Working Instincts; 4) Working Structure; and 5) Color. DEW CLAWS & TAILS: We no longer remove dew claws as doing so does not support a performance dog (read this and watch this). Additionally, we no longer dock tails (read this). Our dogs definitely use their tails when swimming, so tails have a very real and significant purpose. VISITING OUR HOME: Encouraging awareness of the attributes of our breed is our goal; and while we want to respond to each and every person who emails us, we have many obligations that oftentimes keep us from doing that in a timely manner; like family, jobs, training, hunt/field tests, etc. In fact, unless we are planning a litter or have pups on the ground, we oftentimes are completely unable to respond to inquiries about our pups. All of that said, we understand people's desires to stop in and meet our dogs as they travel to Utah (buyers have a right to assess temperament, health, etc. of the parent dogs whose pups they are considering purchasing). However, time dictates that we cannot currently accommodate these travellers except on severely limited days (and generally only on Sundays because of our jobs and our desire to honor the Saturday Sabbath). DIVERSITY: We have made a large investment in the diversity of our breeding stock, and that isn't because we believe that dogs with high Wycliffe (whose genetic makeups are found in the largest percentage of standard poodles) are bad. Quite the contrary. We believe that all purebred poodles are necessary to correct the damage done through intense inbreeding. The reality is that even some of the diverse lines we have been blessed to find are inbred, but they are inbred on dogs from different DNA makeups (read about UC Davis’ Diversity Testing), which has allowed them to create diversity in larger numbers of standard poodles. Breeding to "different" dogs is the key to restoring balance within standard poodles and lowering the frequency of certain diseases, etc. We are committed to that. While written by a cat breeder, this article discusses inbreeding's effect on the immune system. It is our hope that it will help you to understand why we have sought out the dogs currently used in our program and why breeding for color has become very unimportant in the scheme of things. Health (and temperament) must come first.