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...
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 throughthe 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.