11/10/2024
We would like to thank everyone for a wonderful 2024! All of our puppies have found new homes and we are very pleased to hear how both the litters we had this year have been doing in their new homes 🥰 We won’t have any more puppies until spring time next year, but we are always happy to answer any questions in the mean time. I will post a tentative timeline for litters next year at the bottom! This is our end of the year update, so as a warning, it’s going to be a bit lengthy. 🙃
We would like to congratulate our very goofy girl, Honey, on her official retirement! 🥳 She’s always been such a good mamma and she’s definitely earned it! She will join our retired Eva in living out the rest of her years with us in our home, as we don’t rehome our dogs after they are no longer apart of our breeding program. This is especially important to us for Honey, as most of you don’t know, she was a rescue for us from a not so good living situation when she was 3. However, despite her previous past before us, she has always been one of the happiest and sweetest dogs I’ve ever known. With Honey retiring, we will no longer have a litter of all silver puppies.
Also speaking of retirements, it is highly likely that we will be retiring Leddy after her next litter at the end of next year/beginning of 2026 (depending on her heat cycles). This means that after Leddy retires, it will be unlikely that we will ever have any more silver puppies, as we are transitioning our focus to breeding traditional colored and fox red English labs. Once Leddy retires, Ember will then be our only dilute female left in our breeding program. Ember has always had all charcoals in her previous litters, even though Kodi is a silver as the sire, so that’s what we anticipate in the future. Leddy’s retirement will be bittersweet for us at Russell’s Retrievers, as Kodi and Leddy are the 2 that started it all for us as a couple! ❤️🥲
We haven’t done any updates on our youngest and upcoming girls in awhile, so pictured below are sisters, Ruby (left) and Roxy (right), enjoying some sunshine on a beautiful fall day. The girls are a year old now and filling out nicely 🩷 They will be getting their genetic testing done soon and then will be old enough to have their official OFA dysplasia testing done next summer when they turn 2 (Dogs have to be 2 to have official OFA testing). Our other English fox red female, Annie, will be turning 2 next month so she will be getting her OFA testing in the near future! Annie will be in heat any day, but we will not be breeding her until her next heat cycle so we can get her health clearances done first. All our dogs get genetically and OFA dysplasia tested to ensure we are raising the healthiest labs we can!
Going forward in 2025, we will continue to honor our military, nurse, and first responder discount! Again as a husband and wife who are a nurse and first responder, we want to show our appreciation of your service! If this applies to you when inquiring about puppies, then please let us know!
Thanks again to everyone for another wonderful year and we look forward to what 2025 brings! We hope everyone has a great holiday season and a Happy New Year! 🥰
Tentative timeline of litters for 2025:
Ember- Spring/Early Summer 2025 (All charcoals)
Annie- Mid summer 2025 (Fox reds & ?)*
Ruby- Fall 2025 (Fox reds & ?)*
Roxy- Fall 2025 (Fox reds & ?)*
Leddy- End of 2025/Early 2026 (Silvers & charcoals)
*Our fox red litters will depend on the sire we use for litter coloring, which the sire will either be black or fox red
