The following are the most commonly questions we receive about ourselves and our dogs at Stirling English Cockers. We have included information about our breeding philosophy. We hope you find our answers helpful and informative.
We show our dogs in:
We have occasionally shown dogs in obedience, although we do basic obedience training in preparation for other events. like agility. We encourage you, at minimum, to attend a basic obedience & socialization course, as this makes living with a dog easier on everyone!
As is the case of humans, there are almost no guarantees with respect to the appearance of genetic diseases. We do our best to manage these through testing, pedigree research & health record inspection when selecting breeding stock. Potential health problems in this breed include:
Test results for the sire and dam of your potential litter are available upon
request.
Puppies will receive the following prior to release:
Other problems which may occasionally appear in this breed (although they are more common in other breeds) include:
We have spent significant time researching pedigrees for our upcoming litter. Please contact us if you are interested in learning more about the specific pedigrees involved.
Stirling English Cockers has owned English cockers since 1992. We are active
members and officers for the English Cocker Spaniel Club of Southern California.
We are members in good standing of English Cocker Spaniel Club of America (ECSCA)
and the American Kennel Club. We have signed the Code of Ethics of the ECSCA.
Southern California is fortunate to be home to some of the top breeders in the
country. Many of these breeders are our mentors and their dogs appear in our
pedigrees. References are available upon request.
We currently have a moderate list of persons interested in our litter. Once
our litter is born and you have had an opportunity to learn more about it, we
may mutually decide that one of these dogs are suited to you. At that time, we
may ask for a non-refundable deposit for a puppy.
We also encourage you to consider rescue first. Raising a puppy can be a bit of
work and there are wonderful dogs throughout the country (English Cockers and
others) who desperately need homes. We work actively with the rescue program of
the English Cocker Spaniel Club of America. If this is of interest, we would be
happy to help you become an ECSCA Rescue Angel!
Pick-up in person is required. We suggest visiting the litter at 6 weeks, to get a sense for the personality of the puppies and to help us finalize the match to a puppy.
We do not ship puppies. We want to be available to our puppy owners as a support and information resource, so we place our dogs in local homes or near other English Cocker breeders who can mentor you as your raise your puppy.
We plan to produce no more than 1 litter every 2-3 years. Our intent it to keep the pick(s) of the litter for exhibition purposes and to build our breeding program. This may vary, depending on the quality of a specific litter. We do not breed for profit and are opposed to this as a breeding philosopy.
Stirling English Cockers is committed to the sport of purebred dogs. As such, AKC registration forms will be completed prior to release of the puppy to the purchaser and all dogs will be co-owned by Stirling English Cockers until:
Companion dogs (pets) will be sold on AKC limited registrations. AKC registered names will be approved by Stirling and will include no kennel names other than Stirling. We reserve the right to re-possess the dog, if the purchaser fails to comply with these or other terms of the contract.
We determine the price of our puppies by splitting the actual direct costs of the litter across the puppies, so it varies by litter. Prices are subject to change. Price includes testing mentioned above (which fortunately, have come down in price this year), puppy pack (selected starter supplies) and free grooming (if you bring the dog to our home) for the first year:
Our objective is not to make a profit (we lose money every year on our showing expenses alone!). Our objective is to breed sound, quality puppies with lovely temperaments, that make fantastic family companions and that will join wonderful families – hopefully yours!
Where do I go for more information?
Please visit our web site at: http://www.stirling-ecs.org to learn more about us and our dogs.
We hope this information will be helpful to you. If we can be of assistance in referring you to additional resources or help answer questions about this wonderful breed, please just drop us a line at "information at stirling dash ecs dot org"!