Introduction
Greetings from the Shaum family at Sweet Valley Acres. I (Kara) was honored to have Dave from Hidden Pond Labradors ask me to write a guest blog for his website. I thought I would begin with an introduction. We are a small Labrador Retriever breeder located in northern Vermont. While this a family effort, I am the main one to work with the dogs, puppies, and our puppies’ new owners. Since I am still young, it has been wonderful having Dave to mentor me on dog questions. We have a black lab puppy named Kia from Hidden Pond and she is absolutely the best.
Dog breeding has been a part of our family’s life for many years. Our family raised Australian Cattle dogs for some time before we got into labs. We actually had both breeds on our farm for a while. After having an unplanned mixed litter, we decided to narrow down to just Labrador Retrievers. We absolutely love the breed! It all started in the spring of 2022, when my brother brought home our first chocolate Labrador whom he named Jetta. We fell in love with her laid back personality and puppy charm. In the next few years we continued adding to our Lab family.
We were impressed with the deep fox reds and chose that color for our male. Stub is a handsome boy and we are looking forward to beautiful fox red puppies when our two fox red girls are old enough to breed. Sukie is a lovely yellow that we just bred to Stub and look forward to puppies in shades of yellows to a lighter fox red.
Enter Hidden Pond Labradors
We still wanted a black and that’s when we found Hidden Pond. It didn’t take us long to realize our search for a black female puppy was over. My dad and I happily drove the 6½ hours down there yet that afternoon to pick Kia up and arrived home in the wee hours of the morning with her. She was well worth the trip. Her personality is above and beyond! She is so sweet and patient, and I think she would make a wonderful therapy dog! She has the beautiful English conformation as well. Thank you, Dave, for entrusting us with this lovely miss.
Kia
We are continuing to better our breeding program. All our dogs are now DNA and genetic health tested to insure that our puppies have the lowest health risks possible. With Dave’s advice we also have worked on the nutrition for our dog. We are now feeding TLC Pet Food, and couldn’t be happier! We are also supplementing with NuVet Plus, also recommended by Dave, and our dogs absolutely love it. It is like their doggy candy. 🙂
Puppies Coming
We are expecting 3 litters of puppies this fall, and should have all three colors including the darker shade of yellow called fox red. We are currently in the process of launching our new website. You can keep an eye on the progress at www.sweetvalleyacreslabs.com. Until that is up and running, you can check us out on AKC Marketplace listing at https://marketplace.akc.org/breeder/sweetvalleyacres. We wish you a wonderful fall, and stay tuned for more info on Hidden Pond Labradors and Sweet Valley Acre’s Labradors in the coming weeks!
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