Welcome to Heritage Collies!
We at Heritage believe that health, temperament and quality are of utmost importance in our breeding program for our dogs. This was the core philosophy of Signet Collies, and will continue as the base philosophy of Heritage Collies. Exhibiting our collies is a family hobby. Having puppies to supply the pet world is not a consideration. We make a breeding to see if we might come even closer to our interpretation of the AKC standard for the perfect collie. We hope that every generation moves us closer. While our litters may contain our pick puppy for our kennel, it also contains the others that need loving, caring homes. This gives the puppy buyer a wonderful, beautiful collie to be a member of the family. The dogs we breed today are the foundation of our future generations; This is the generations of both the dogs and our own future children.
At Heritage, each puppy is carefully socialized and evaluated from the moment of its birth. The same things that make a wonderful pet also make a wonderful show dog. The outgoing personality of your family pet is the same "Look at me!" attitude of a show dog. These dogs know when it is time to go to work in the show ring or play hard with the kids, and then take down time to recoup for the next round.
All our puppies spend the first couple of weeks in a warm, secure environment and then they are moved to our living room in order to get the most activity and socialization. We will sit in the evenings cuddling a puppy, switching them every so often so that all the puppies are held. Why? This gives the puppies a chance to become secure with a new person holding them and actually enlarges and develops their "comfort zone." When a puppy is chosen by you to be a member of your family, they are ready to adapt quickly and easily to your family or they are able to handle the active life of a show dog.
These dogs are all our pets first. Our "kennel dogs" have spent a large part of their youth as house puppies for socialization and show training. Everyone comes into the house occasionally and the eldest dogs take their rightful place in the house for their golden years.